


Under a Hot Greek Sun

by delighted



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Greece, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-21
Updated: 2021-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-27 07:54:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 44,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30119574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delighted/pseuds/delighted
Summary: Stuffed grape leaves and ouzo-spiked cocktails, black sand beaches and sleek wooden sailboats, smooth plastered walls and steep steps down to the sea....Danny's mostly content, in his life on a small, friendly island in the Aegean. His circle of friends is supportive and loving, but sometimes he feels something is missing. A new ship in the harbor brings adventure, and the promise of so much more.This work is 60,000 words, and is complete. Four chapters, 15k each, chapter three today, remaining chapter on Sunday.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 44
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story started as a chapter of my [AU series](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19131547/chapters/45467077), back in August. It grew, and I let it, and now it’s my longest single story ever. I’m excited and relieved to finally share it with you. 
> 
> Virtual shots of ouzo to Ymas for her "heck yes, Greece!" response when I said I was sort of lazily thinking about a Greek island story (and for keeping up with a more than 150-email thread over the span of seven months). And a big hug to AlgeriaTouchshriek, for the gentle nudges that pushed me to dig deeper when I didn't think I could. 
> 
> Alright. Let's DO this. <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See End Notes for a very mild and slightly spoiler-y content note.

Danny sits with his back against the warm stone wall. He’s painted half already with the blindingly white paint that coats all the smooth surfaces of the lofty, skyward focused island. The other half, he’s decided, will wait till evening. The sun is already too high in the sky and the minimalistic puffs of pale pink bougainvillea that twine their way defiantly against the wall do nothing to provide anything even remotely related to shade. The day will no doubt be a hot one, even this early in the season, and the only thing that motivates him is the prospect of an icy retsina at the end of the day with the Kokolakis brothers at their bar. 

He likes this time of year. No longer just the true locals, the year-rounders, but also now the ones who spend part of the year back in the city—turning to island life in time for the hoards of sweaty, drunken, horny tourists to descend on their little piece of paradise with too much money and too little care for self-preservation. Some islanders make the most of it in slightly less than strictly legal ways, but others, like Danny, like Alekos and Tryfon, like Marina Georgoulis, genuinely look out for the idiots and make sure they enjoy themselves without too much lasting harm being done. 

Marina, as though she’s been summoned by Danny’s thoughts, waves to him from her window further down the sloping walk to the sea, shouting something about stopping by to try some new creation of hers. His Greek is improving. Not that it matters as most of the people he interacts with speak perfect English—better than many Americans, as they actually understand the concept of grammar. Danny’s German comes more in handy than his Greek, to be honest. But he likes the language. Likes the way it feels on his tongue, on his lips.

At least something feels nice on his tongue and lips.

Shit. It’s been too long, once again.

He waves back and promises to stop by once he’s showered. “Once I don’t stink like a donkey,” is the literal translation, but you get the gist. 

Hammering the lid back on the can, Danny lets himself get lost in the bleary-mind unthinkingness that’s been his salvation since he moved to this harsh, whitewashed rock in the middle of the Aegean. His lifelong habit of overthinking everything is one thing that didn’t follow him all the way from Jersey, all the way from his failed marriage, his failed career, his failed life. Here, he can be a failure and not feel like it’s a bad thing. Here, he can work hard and then reward himself by playing harder. 

There’s only one thing that’s threatening to start wearing on him. Which is that at his age, evidently five years of busting his ass to get the dilapidated old hotel polished back to something approaching its former glory, after five years of slutty and desperate summer fuckfests (followed by the inevitable winter celibacy), Danny’s vaguely afraid his former preference for a monogamous and steady relationship might finally be beginning to heal from the emotional trauma of a spectacularly failed marriage. 

It’s damned inconvenient if you ask him. 

And damned frustrating.

The hotel’s interior is dark and cool in contrast to the bright hot outside, and Danny permits himself a long moment of letting the grounding, earthy feeling of the cave-like structure envelop him. He still feels it, that primal connection he’d fallen in love with on that “thank god my divorce is final” trip he’d gone on all those years ago.

The one he’d never gone home from. 

Home.

Now there’s a concept. 

Home had always been a town just slightly down and to the left from The City. He’d never imagined it would be anywhere else. Never imagined it _could_ be anywhere else. Elizabeth or Union or even Newark or heck, the fucking Shore (not Atlantic City, dear god no, but one of the smaller towns like Cape May—he’d nearly let Rachel talk him into that, in his desperation to save their marriage). 

Never an island. Never Greece. Never Europe. 

But he’d walked, out of sheer curiosity, into the vacant lobby of the rundown hotel, and he’d never wanted to leave. Half a bottle of ouzo later, a contract that had felt a little too close to a deal with the devil, and all his worldly possessions (plus his soul) had been bound to the desperate dream of being one of those glorious characters, the hotel-owning ex-pat, who lives in flip flops and faded linen, tan beyond reason, soul and heart worn around the edges, but finally, blessedly, at peace.

Danny felt it here. Peace. In a way he’d never known back “home.” This was his home now, he’d known it the moment he’d stepped inside, he still feels it every time he does. 

Of course the lobby’s not vacant now. Even off-season there’s always a handful of people, eager for the sun and the black sand beaches even in the spring when it’s not quite warm enough to go in the water. He likes those tourists sometimes best of all. They drink less, talk more, and Danny’s come to relish the role he sometimes plays, of comforting councilor, sounding board for those who travel—like he did—to find themselves. 

Often they simply need the distance of thousands of miles to see that what they truly want was already right in front of them. Sometimes they think they want what he has. Romance. Escape. Freedom. Usually they just want a better job or a new apartment or a hotter partner. He doesn’t mind playing the part. Doesn’t mind being used that way. 

Him and his hotel, they serve their guests well. 

Often they return—his guests who leave for home renewed—with tales of better jobs or photos of bigger apartments. Or they bring their new partners, often with the goal of leaving engaged. 

That is his romance. If only they understood that. Their exotic romance is his life here on this harsh rock tossed haphazardly in the sea. His is their domestic normalcy back in their dull grey cities. Their work-a-day jobs and co-ops and shelter cats and potted plants. 

But Danny’s life now is this carved out bit of cold hard rock, and he wouldn’t trade it for the biggest apartment in the city. 

It’s just that he wouldn’t mind someone to share it with.

He does shower. Washes the paint and the sweat from his skin. Washes a bit more internal fluid down the swirling drain as well. 

He’s rather adept at the speedy use of his hand. Wouldn’t mind a more drawn out enjoyment, but it’s pure practicality these days. Get it done and get on to the stuff that needs to be done. Never mind that he wouldn’t mind being done. (The _If you know what I mean_ echoes in his head as his bitter laugh echoes in the room.)

He dresses in that shade of just-barely-blue he knows looks sharp against his tanned skin and sun-bleached blond hair. Slicks said hair back with practiced ease before sliding his feet into a pair of well-worn sandals of the typical Greek style. They suit him now. He’d felt like an imposter the first time he’d tried them on, Alekos goading him on and promising they’d get him laid. 

They had. By Alekos. The first of the “let’s fuck in all the rooms of the hotel, just to make sure the beds all work” game they’d played. Before they’d realized they actually preferred being friends _without_ benefits. 

He inhabits them now, the sandals. Has the foot tan lines to prove it. The fact that Rachel would absolutely die of embarrassment if she ever saw him like this might have originally been part of the allure. But he’s come to appreciate the ease, the comfort, and, okay yes, the aesthetic of them. 

Marina’s waiting for him, in the kitchen of her restaurant, singing softly as he slips in the back door, wrapping his arms around her, kissing her on the neck, and grinning broadly when she pretends to be shocked and slaps him on the ass in retaliation. 

The physicality of the Greeks is something he’d never thought he’d adjust to. Having grown up with relatives who imagined they were only just off the metaphorical boat from Italy he’d thought he was used to a complete lack of physical boundaries, but the island Greeks do them one better. 

He loves it. And not just because it fills a little bit of his own insatiable need for human contact. It’s genuine. In a way that pseudo-Italian posturing never quite manages. That’s always a little bit of a put on. And it’s always from a place of love. Or wine. (Or wine coolers.) But the Greek version, along with the distinct smell of oregano, is somehow earthier, more genuine. It proves he belongs, and he treasures that. He treasures them. Marina especially.

Danny sits on the chair she keeps in the kitchen for him. 

“Taste,” she orders, shoving a spoon in his mouth. “Eh?” She demands immediately, barely allowing the sweet and pungent sauce to dance across his tongue. It’s tomato and herb and something deeper, richer, more tantalizing, and god help him it makes his thoughts return to his other longings.

“Mmmmm,” he manages, eyes opening once he realizes he’s shut them. 

Her eyes are twinkling. “Tastes like sex, no?”

He sputters. “Ummm.”

“Oh you men, so prudish always. I roasted the tomatoes with sugar. The smell of that is better than viagra.”

He laughs at that, and finds he can’t disagree. “You serving this tonight? Anyone special in mind?”

“For me, no. For you, perhaps.”

Danny nearly chokes on his second spoonful of sauce. “Seriously?”

She leans in, slapping him unhelpfully on the back and then pinching him on the cheek. “American. Sailor. Very pretty.”

“Ohhh, I don’t know, Marina, I’m still not really up for....” He hesitates, unsure how to word it.

“Pussy?” She waves off his objection to her choice of words. “No worries. He has dick. Probably a nice one from the size of him.”

Danny feels his cheeks heat and grabs for the glass of ouzo she’s poured him. The stringent burn of the anise steadies his heart rate, though it only amplifies the humming of his blood. 

“I have to work tonight, you know that.”

Her smile proves she’s noticed he’s not objecting. “Come for early dinner. You have to eat. You can take dessert home with you.”

Danny very much suspects she doesn’t mean her signature _baklava_.

*

He gets a little lost in his day, doing the usual pre-season stuff, getting ready for the tourists. Practical stuff, like fixing doors and oiling window cranks. And some frivolous stuff like digging up a box of glassware from the dusty old storeroom. Another relic from the hotel’s former days, which he adores making use of. Partly because it’s free decor, partly because it’s a nod to the building’s history, and he loves that. The glasses have a classically Greek pattern on them, the key, etched around the rim, and he can’t imagine why he hasn’t been using them all along. They’ll be perfect at the little bar on the patio, for sunset drinks on Friday nights. 

Maybe the idea has allowed him to slide into slightly romantic-tinted notions. And maybe he indulges himself in some harmless daydreaming while he goes about the rest of the day’s to do list, because it’s some time later, getting on towards evening, when a clearing of the throat and a softly accusatory “You are distracted...” pulls him out of his imaginings. 

Thalia is standing behind the registration desk, not working on anything so much as regarding Danny amusedly, if fondly, and he realizes he’s gone round the lobby for a third or possibly fourth time, making sure all the fixtures are secure and tightened. Again. 

He looks over at her, no doubt with something maybe approaching a slightly dreamy expression on his face. So, yes, he’s let himself get swept up in the idea of a pretty sailor and a little of the romance he’s been longing for. 

“What time do you meet him?”

Ah. Of course. Marina’s told her. Geez, does the entire island know Danny’s got a date?

“Uhh, not till six.”

Thalia sighs, rolling her eyes exaggeratedly, but not doing the best job of hiding her delight. She’s been encouraging him to get out more, relax more, and while he knows it’s partly because she wants more responsibility, he also knows she thinks he works too hard, and blames his shitty sleeping habits on his propensity to imagine the weight of the entire world—or, at least the hotel—rests on his shoulders alone. 

“Go have a drink with Alekos,” she suggests when Danny doesn’t say more. “It will help you to relax before you meet him.”

And he tries not to bristle at the implication, that he might be a little rusty at this whole dating thing. But unfortunately it’s not an unfair assessment. Still, he hesitates, because he’d intended to help her with some orders they’d planned to do, but she’s one step ahead of him. 

“I am doing the orders. I have the list. It will be easy.” 

And he knows it’s true, knows she’d most likely be the one to do it, even if it was with him watching over her shoulder. She’s no longer the green young girl she was when he first hired her, though Danny still sees her through that lens. After all, she’s more than capable now, of taking care of the truly important stuff, not just the flowers and event decorations he’d originally hired her away from the local florist to handle. 

She’s taken on gradually more and more responsibility over the past five years. Making sure they’re fully stocked with light bulbs, and ensuring they don’t run out of those little soaps. But she’s starting to take over more of the business stuff as well, has taken online classes, and has stepped beyond Danny in the technology and marketing world: updating the listings online, putting fresh images on the website, and other things involving social media and terms Danny doesn’t understand. It’s stuff that gets them customers. Customers who bring new customers, customers who return, year after year. 

He couldn’t do this without her and he knows it. She’s starting to know it too, and it fills that place inside him he’d always imagined having a child might. He’s proud of her, of the woman she’s become. So maybe his face softens even more, as she pushes him to take off early, and it’s her turn to bristle slightly, at his paternal fondness. 

“I think you got too much sun painting the wall.” 

He laughs, because she’s not entirely wrong. 

Thalia takes the tool kit from his hands, shoos him away with a graceful wave of her hand. “I’m here for the guests tonight. Go, you need to relax more, have more fun. You work too hard.” It’s an oft repeated refrain, more genuine care than true scolding, yet with that kernel of truth. 

Danny smiles into her twinkling eyes. “What did I do to deserve you,” he asks warmly. 

“Okay, now I know you had too much sun,” she sighs, failing to hide her pleasure at his praise. “You better eat something before you drink too much. Have something healthy though,” she calls after him as he heads out the door. “You are not as young as you used to be, old man!”

Danny laughs at her fond teasing, and his heart lifts as he sets out for the bar. 

*

Alekos is sitting out front of The Two Brothers, stretched luxuriantly in the shade, like he’s soaking up the chill that lingers there still, storing up his reserves for the blistering heat that will soon hit. His eyes are closed, but he’s not asleep, because his foot is swaying sideways as though he’s got some internal soundtrack playing. It’s the best way of describing the man, Danny thinks. He lives life like it has a soundtrack.

Danny walks by him, thinking he’ll head inside and grab drinks for them both, but as he passes, Alekos’s hand reaches out to grab his and still him.

His eyes open slowly, drinking Danny in as though he needs no other refreshment.

“Ah, that will do,” he says softly, giving Danny’s hand a squeeze before dropping it.

“Do for what?” Danny asks, chuckling, amused more than flattered. He loves Alekos, but the man would flirt with a tree.

“Marina told us about your date tonight. We are, quote: ‘not to let you get drunk or she will kick our asses across the island.’” His tone implies he wouldn’t object to being so treated by the lovely chef.

“She would, too.” Danny pets him on the top of his glossy head of curls, then checks—“ _Retsina_?” And upon receiving the nod of acknowledgement, slips inside the cool, dark interior and heads for the bar.

The long, rustic slab of wood that does double duty as drink holder and dance floor is being lovingly polished by Tryfon, but he’s anticipated Danny’s approach and laid out two glasses and an already sweating bottle of the house white that had taken Danny about a year to get used to, but which he now favors—to the point that wine that’s not been aged in the resin-coated barrels simply tastes bland to him.

“He is not good for you, you know,” Tryfon says gruffly, jerking his head in the direction of his younger brother. “He fucks up your idea of what a relationship should look like.”

Danny grabs the glasses in one hand, wipes the bottle with his other hand before shaking the water off his fingers and drying them on his pants. “I know,” he says, tone halfway between wary and defensive. “He’s made me expect both solid friendship and amazing sex from the same person.”

“You _ought_ to expect love,” comes the reply.

Danny sighs. “If that even still exists.”

“That is what I mean. It is easy to give up on love. Alekos feeds your hurt and keeps you from remembering you are not like him, you _do_ want love. Real love. _Eros_. Not just _philía_ with someone you fuck. Do not give up on it, Danny. I know it is easy. Easy to give in and just take what you can. But true _eros_ is worth the wait.”

They’ve had this conversation before. Many versions of it. Tryfon the romantic. Alekos the pleasurist. Tryfon the wise councilor behind the bar, Alekos the bold encourager, getting even the shiest wallflower to dance upon it. Both support the patrons who come to their small but welcoming establishment—those looking to forget, and those looking to create memories that will sustain them when they return to their placid lives of quiet normalcy. Both are right, of course. You gotta dance on the bar once in your life. But it’s not a weekly occupation for most of us.

Alekos is therapy. Makes Danny feel good, enjoy life. But Tryfon’s ideals are closer to Danny’s own damaged ones. 

He’s just not sure his heart is healed enough to believe. 

_Yet._

He takes the bottle and glasses out to Alekos, pours them each a glass, and they sit, in companionable silence for a while. Old friends, soft and faded around the edges, easy with one another the way you sometimes only can be with a sometime lover you know you only ever loved as a friend. There’s a comfort there. You know those things about each other that only lovers do, but you also know the things only true friends do. It’s a relationship Danny’s been lucky enough to have a few times in his life, and he always treasures it, but even within that, Alekos is special. And not just because on a small island all your relationships mean that much more. Tryfon isn’t wrong— _eros_ is important. But all forms of love have their place in a full and satisfying life, and the true love of a true friend is in many ways, at many times, more valuable, more meaningful, more fulfilling.

So Danny feels both oddly contented and strangely excited as he sits with his dear friend and contemplates the possibility of something more with a stranger.

And that’s part of it, obviously. The starting from scratch. It has its allure, of course. The excitement unlike any other. The electricity, the energy, the thrill. But it has its downside as well. The fears, the insecurities, the old inadequacies that come creeping back to the surface, never as fully beaten back as you think. That first time being naked. Vulnerable. The first time you say _I love you._ It’s terrifying, and when you have trauma there, those bruises are so sensitive, they anticipate fresh hurt.

Danny’s good at that. The anticipation of pain. The pre-feeling of the injury that may or may not freshen itself. Anyone with an old sports injury knows the physical side of that, like anyone whose heart has ever been broken knows the emotional one.

Danny knows both. Too well.

“You are thinking too much,” Alekos teases him, sandaled foot nudging his own. “Get out of your head. Do not ruin what has not yet happened by tasting the failure already. Have fun tonight, just be here.” He taps his fingers on the table in front of them, the solid wood reverberating, causing the half-full bottle to slosh before he picks it up to refill their glasses.

“ _Yia mas_ ,” says Danny, holding his glass out.

“To good cock,” Alekos adds, eyes flashing with the heat he’s never stopped aiming at Danny, even though Danny knows he won’t act on it. Maybe some people don’t get that, don’t understand the level of sexualized energy that can permeate a friendship, but Alekos is a master of it. It warms Danny like the Greek sun.

“To possibilities,” Danny counter offers.

Alekos drinks, then sets his glass down and regards Danny with a seriousness that would seem out of place next to the heat he was exuding only moments before if you didn’t know him as well as Danny does. “He is right you know. My brother. You _do_ deserve love.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in that,” Danny points out, smiling into his wine.

“For me, no. For you, I think.... Yes.” His tone is soft. There’s a hint of injury there, and Danny knows he’s remembering conversations from long ago, the post-coital philosophical explorations that eventually led to the realization on both their parts that as much as Danny thought he wanted to be the kind of guy who joyfully fucks without attachment, it’s just not how his heart is built.

Danny sighs, sips his drink. “I haven't ever been successful at it,” he says, falling back on his old argument against love. “I mean, just look at my marriage.”

“Not the right person,” Alekos says, as though it really were that simple, and downs the rest of his _retsina_. “And now,” he says, patting Danny’s knee with a hand that’s as warm and soft as the expression in his eyes. “You should go.”

Danny hesitates. He knows _this_ comfort. The companionship. The trust. The safety. “What makes you think this guy could possibly be the right one?”

Alekos grins. “I trust Marina’s judgement. She thinks he is good for you, I listen.”

“You’d say anything to get in her bed,” Danny accuses. It’s not untrue.

He shrugs. “You have tasted her food. You can not cook like that and not be amazing at sex.”

“She’d break your heart,” Danny warns.

The grin turns thoughtful. “I am not sure I would mind.”

With a shake of his head, Danny stands. Ruffles Alekos’s dark hair, blows him a kiss, and heads back down the hill towards the restaurant, and the unknown.

*

Danny hears his voice before he sees him. The flat American accent standing out against the backdrop of the heavier Greek. Something about the tone feels like home to Danny, in that instantly to his gut kind of way, and obviously it’s familiarity, it’s comfort, it’s reassuring, but there’s some intangible connection, almost like he recognizes something in the pitch, the cadence, the vibration. It just hits differently.

He might have expected such a visceral reaction to set him on edge, but it doesn’t. It sets him at ease, in an almost disturbing way, like it’s calculated to set him at ease. He thinks probably this is a man accustomed to calming people down. Emergency services, maybe. Danny’s familiar with the tonal quality, as his dad was just as likely to apply his version of such a tone at home as he was at the scene of a fire he was fighting.

The first thing he notes once he’s actually stepped inside the restaurant is that all the focus is on the new guy. It’s almost like he’s holding court. There’s only a handful of locals present, but they’ve all fallen under the sway of the tall man at the center.

And, okay, he sees what Marina meant. There’s no denying the guy is pretty. Built, too—and not in the intentional, put together by working out at a gym kind of way, but from the actually doing physical labor kind of way. Danny knows both—Danny’s _been_ both. He knows which he prefers, both to be, and to experience.

Suddenly, the guy looks up. And Danny’s sure he hasn’t made a sound, or any kind of movement, but there’s this moment, when their eyes meet, and it’s like the voice thing but amplified. It’s recognition. It’s... being seen. And Danny knows there are few things more potent than the feeling of truly being seen. Alekos looks at Danny. Consumes him visually, in the way all great seduction artists do. The guests at the hotel look at him and see the romantic ideal of an ex-pat living the island life. But it’s been ages since Danny’s truly felt like _he’s_ what’s being seen. And it goes straight to his chest like a punch.

Marina notices the guy’s stopped talking, and she turns to look towards the door. She must see something in Danny’s expression because her face lights up in sheer delight, but also with a fierce fire of knowing she was right.

She steers him over toward Danny. Like she’s presenting two high profile people to each other. But the guy beats her to it.

“You must be Danny,” he says, tone all warm and soft like sunshine on a goddamn beach. “I’m Steve. It’s good to finally meet you.”

“Jesus, Marina, what have you told this guy?”

Steve laughs. The easy, comfortable laugh of someone at home in their own body. God, but it’s compelling.

“Only the truth,” she says, the certainly flashing in her words. “Sit, eat,” she instructs, and Danny knows better than to argue.

Evidently Steve does as well.

She brings them cocktails to start. Small, light but flavorful, and a little surprising unless you know what’s coming. He expects Steve to react, but he’s clearly experienced the pale blue drink before.

“ _Yia mas_ ,” Steve offers, clinking his glass against Danny’s before sipping thoughtfully like his mind is a little somewhere else.

“People don’t ordinarily take so easily to Marina’s _Island Dream_ concoction,” Danny muses, picking up one of the larger olives from the platter of small bowls before them. It’s meaty and briny and goes surprisingly well with the spicy citrus tang of the drink.

“Reminds me of home,” Steve replies, his tone, Danny recognizes, that of someone who doesn’t plan to return.

“I’m sorry.”

A smile spreads slowly across Steve’s face. “Home is where we make it, right?”

“Can a boat be home?”

“Mmm,” Steve replies, around the pit of an olive he’s popped into his mouth. “The sea, absolutely.”

Danny can’t entirely suppress the shudder that washes over his skin.

“Yeah, now that I’m not sure I get,” Steve says, leaning forward, and speaking in hushed tones, as though Danny’s fear of the ocean is some kind of secret. “How’d you end up living on a tiny island in the middle of the sea if you hate the water?”

“I don’t hate the water, I just have a healthy respect for it.”

“Prove it,” Steve offers, his challenging words at odds with the warm amusement in his voice. “Come sailing with me.”

“We’re not even past _hors d’oeuvres_ and you’re asking me on a second date?”

Steve grins, only it’s more akin to a smirk, and it riles Danny up a little. They reach for the olives at the same moment and as their hands touch Danny half expects there to be an actual spark. It’s like electricity exudes from this guy, out his pores, from his smile, rolling off his tanned and glowing skin like waves of magnetism, and it throws Danny off his footing, which granted isn’t a super difficult thing to do, as he’s only ever got a tenuous hold anyway, but the thing is somehow he doesn’t actually mind, where ordinarily he would feel more than a little uneasy. Not that he has a higher than normal need for control, it’s just he’s wary of letting his _go_ around the wrong person.

Something tells him Steve’s not that person, something tells him Steve very much is the _right_ person to let go around, but Danny is very aware of the probability that he’s thinking entirely with his dick.

“Gotta get a second date before I ask for more,” Steve replies, somewhat enigmatically, settling on one of the smaller black olives before withdrawing his hand, brushing it gently against Danny’s as he does.

“Oh, a gentleman,” Danny says, and immediately hates the snark in his tone. He’s about to apologize, excuse his bitterness, when he sees Steve doesn’t look the least offended. He’s not sure what he’d call the look, but _up for the challenge_ comes to mind. And Danny doesn’t know what to do with that. The full frontal assault he knows. Being swept off his feet, seduced to within an inch of his life, sure. Steve just looks at Danny as though no one could expect anything less than perfectly proper behavior and he’s unwilling to even consider otherwise. 

_Yeah, exactly like a gentleman,_ Danny’s brain offers. 

Well, isn’t that surprising. 

One thing you think working in the hospitality industry prepares you for is never being surprised by anything. But this... is surprising. And yet at exactly the same time, it occurs to him that it shouldn’t be. That he—that everyone—should expect to be treated exactly this well. This deserving. Because everyone is.

“Don’t say no,” Steve says into the lengthening silence, slightly ruining the gentlemanly effect, and yet breaking the tension, and thus being a true gentleman.

“Okay,” Danny replies, sitting back and taking a deep drink of the ouzo and curaçao spiked sparkling lemonade.

Steve’s answering grin could power the entire fucking island.

Marina feeds them like they’re in her test kitchen. Small, shared plates of grilled lamb in a fantastic herbed sauce, smashed roasted baby potatoes that are so lemony they actually make the ouzo-citrus cocktail seem mild, and eggplant baked in feta and that sublime sauce from the morning—just to name a few. Frankly, as fantastic as the food is, Danny loses track a little as Steve regales him with stories of his sort-of-round-the-world voyage.

“There are places I don’t need to see again, I’m mostly hitting the ones I missed during my time in the Navy.”

And of course, Steve’s not just any sailor, he’s an ex-freaking SEAL. A fact that has not gone unnoticed by Danny’s bodily systems. A fact which no doubt explains his inability to keep track of all the food Marina feeds them.

He does notice that Steve keeps up with every dish she brings out, and he sees why he’s won her favor. Danny almost wants to warn the guy “save room for dessert,” but decides against it, partly because it’ll be amusing to watch him try to eat everything and partly because he figures he knows what he’s doing. Evidently something of this appears on his face because Steve’s halted his story about that time he got momentarily lost off the coast of some war-zone and ended up being shot at, which from anyone else Danny might think was an exaggeration, but from him somehow it feels like understatement.

“God, I can’t imagine getting to eat like this every day,” he says, licking his fingers utterly unselfconsciously as he pops the last bite of sauce-soaked pita into his mouth. Danny tries not to stare, but shit, you could charge admission to watch Steve eat and make good money doing it. “You not gonna finish that?” He asks Danny, nodding at the shared plates in the middle of the small table, where Danny has very carefully and from years of experience overeating Marina's delectable foods, left a good portion of each of his servings untouched.

Danny gestures go ahead, and Steve grins at him, this genuine, open grin that reminds him yet again of the beach on a warm summer’s day. If he hadn’t already agreed to go sailing, he probably would agree to pretty much anything the guy asked right now. He does feel the tiniest bit guilty not issuing at least some form of warning, though, so he laughingly says “Save room for dessert,” but it comes out less like an insinuation that Marina’s sweets are as filling as her meals, and a whole lot more like Danny’s propositioning him.

The grin just widens. “Oh, don’t worry, I will.”

Danny’s pretty sure he actually fucking blushes.

Marina’s watching them from the kitchen, Danny’s sure of it, though he intentionally doesn’t turn to look, but she clears their dishes as soon as Steve’s finished the last bite of potato, dragged through the drizzle of herbed sauce that remains on the platter that held the lamb. Steve eats, Danny realizes, like it’s foreplay. Which, he guesses, it kind of is. 

Marina obviously would agree, because her desserts are always on the honeyed side of things, as many Greek desserts are, but tonight she’s made them all bite-sized servings, assembled artfully together, dripping in sweet sauce, dusted in powdered sugar, or sprinkled with chopped pistachios, and served with hot, boozy coffee—the obvious implication that sleep is not in the forefront of either of their minds. And Danny would easily agree with the assessment under normal circumstances, but everything about meeting Steve has felt entirely _not_ normal circumstances, and that realization sits uncomfortably on his skin.

He thinks maybe Steve’s either caught his energy shift or had one of his own, because after they each reach for one of the sweets, fingers tangling stickily before being pulled reluctantly apart, they lean back easily in their chairs, heated gazes growing softer, and they lazily chat about favorite desserts the world over—gelato in Italy of course, chestnut confections further north, pastry to the west, bizarre fruits to the east. By the time Danny’s reached the dregs of his too-strong coffee, and the dessert platter remains more than half-full, he knows his own exhaustion is reflected on Steve’s tired but contented face.

Their enchantress in the kitchen is not the least thrown by the evident lackluster of her subjects, and she brings them a take-away container (just the one), her expression, if anything, more smugly delighted than Danny would have expected.

“Not so much with the sweet teeth tonight, I see,” she says, scooping the assorted goodies into the box. “They are even better the next day, having rested overnight in the syrup.”

And her words are innocent enough, her tone even lacks that layer of insinuation, but Danny feels the push of it regardless. Anticipation is fuel to the flame, and it’s currently burning low—but that’s when the heat gets the most searing, and he feels the import of that in his bones.

It’s not till they’re standing out towards the sea, moonlight reflecting off the white expanse of the path down to the docks that Danny hesitates.

“Are you a morning person?” Steve asks, and it feels intimate and practical at the same time. He clarifies, when Danny hesitates: “Early morning sailing or sunset sailing?”

And the pragmatist in him kicks back to life enough to remind Danny of his half-painted wall. “Ugh, I have some stuff to do in the morning, actually. These walls don’t stay white on their own,” he says, patting the nearest one fondly.

Steve’s eyes reflect the bright, near-full moon, as well as something Danny might almost call mischievousness, as they track from Danny’s face down his arm to where his hand rests, splayed against the bright glowing wall, and back up to Danny’s face—no, his lips. “I’ve been known to be handy with a paintbrush,” Steve offers, and Danny knows it’s an honest offer, though it sounds suggestive as well, but he hears the genuine desire to be helpful. He recognizes in it his own helpful nature, and that sets his already full head buzzing.

“Yeah?” He asks, letting a teasing tone slide into his inflection. “You good at coloring between the lines?”

“Absolutely,” Steve insists, less insulted by the implication he might be messy than Danny would have guessed. Either that or he’s just that damn eager to please. Which is a compelling thought.

“With your help we’d be done in time for a lunchtime sailing?” Danny offers, because he’s really not going to refuse help so willingly offered. Besides, it might lead to getting to see Steve shirtless, which will be a reward all its own. “I make a mean sandwich,” he offers, in case recompense is required, and because that’s how he was raised.

“Sounds perfect, ‘cause I love a mean sandwich,” comes the reply, and though the words are teasing, the tone is anything but. He steps closer, right into Danny’s space, and the box of desserts Marina had left on the table—which Steve had grabbed onto like they were precious treasure—he now presses into Danny’s hands. “You better keep these safe.” And his tone implies he would be unable to restrain himself, which is thick with implications all their own.

Danny impresses himself by somehow not shivering at the thought. “I _can_ be a morning person, by the way,” he says, because this amount of sexual tension just hanging there will do his head in. “With enough sugar and caffeine, I can be a morning person.”

“That’s very good to know.” And with that, Steve steps back, grins that Cheshire Cat grin once more, and walks off down the steeply sloping path to the sea.

*

Thalia’s waiting up for him, sitting behind the welcome desk, book in one had, cup of tea in the other. She makes a little show of looking at the clock on the wall, but the fact she waited up tells him more than her teasing. 

“Didn’t finish?” She asks, eyebrow raised, with a nod to the box in Danny’s hand.

“More like... saving it for next time?”

Her eyes sparkle at that but she doesn’t push, takes it as the most he’ll tell her, and setting her book and tea cup down, she gets up, shuts off the desk lamp, and waves him off to bed. “Better get your beauty sleep then, I will lock up.”

But Danny lingers while she shuts the office, puts the door on the emergency setting, so guests can exit, but non-guests can’t enter, and together they head towards the staff rooms at the back—no ocean views from their patios, not that they need them. They know where the sea is, can see it any time they like from the lounge, or the pool deck. Danny admits to enjoying his morning coffee with a view of the vast expanse of blue. He can’t really explain it, except that it grounds him. Roots him. Reminds him where he is, and why. But his dark, cool, cavern-like rooms are soothing and grounding just the same. Make him feel connected to the earth and land in the same way the view reminds him we come from the proverbial sea.

He doesn’t move to open his door immediately, and Thalia pauses too, leaning against her open doorway, waiting for Danny to say whatever more he’s thinking of confessing. But when he doesn’t, when he stays silent (though he figures the gears in his head are loud enough for the whole building to hear), she dares put it to words. 

“You have already fallen for him, haven’t you?”

And the thing is, he almost doesn’t mind admitting how true that is.

He shrugs. Bites his lip. “Would that be so bad?” He asks, knowing she’ll know he’s actually asking.

“That you can finally think it makes me so happy. When are you seeing him again? Tomorrow?”

Danny nods, opening his door, using the excuse to turn his back, because he’s slightly embarrassed to admit _how._ “He’s, uh, he’s gonna help with the painting, and then take me out on his boat.”

Any reaction she might have started to have to the painting is washed completely away by his mention of the boat. 

“Oooo, Dan-o,” she gasps, punctuating her nickname for him with a teasingly shocked hand to his arm as he turns back to face her. “Willing to get on a boat for recreational purposes? He _must_ be special.” He laughs awkwardly, only proving her point more, and she smiles even bigger. “I can not wait to meet him,” she says, tone genuine yet also mischievous, and before Danny can object, warn her off, threaten to not stock up on her favorite American imported snacks and treats, she ducks inside her room and shuts the door, calling _oneira glyká_ as she goes.

“Sweet dreams to you too, _glyko mou_ ,” he mutters fondly to the shut door, then looks down at the box in his hands, as the sense memory of Steve’s fingers twining with his over dessert flood his body, making him finally shiver.

Danny certainly plans on having sweet dreams.

***

Danny in fact does have remarkably sweet dreams. 

Honey features prominently, as does a certain well-muscled sailor. But so do more surprising things. Like lazy mornings on the pool deck, sipping coffee and eating coffee cake. And sunsets aboard a sleek wooden sailboat, drinking beers and thinking about... surfing? Surely that’s just a metaphor for sex. Not that Danny hasn't imagined a universe in which he’d take up surfing. But surely that ship has, as they say, sailed, along with his youth. There’s a dog, as well. Hardly surprising, as there are countless strays on the island and Thalia is always threatening to bring one home for him. He wakes feeling happy and contented, though not... _fully_ contented, if you catch his drift. 

So he showers and starts to deal with things his accustomed way, but he’s barely into it when he realizes he doesn’t want that. Not to suggest he desires to keep himself on edge, keep that proverbial fire lit beneath him. He’d end up dragging Steve into the supplies cupboard well before noon. But no. It’s that his mind, his heart, is so full of genuine feeling, feeling that reaches deeper than he’d thought his heart even went anymore. From one evening out, and one night’s worth dreaming about this magical man who swept so suddenly, so powerfully, so utterly out of nowhere, right into his life—and, seemingly, right into his heart. And just the way a swift and gratifying fuck-instead-of-dessert just didn’t feel right, taking morning matters into his own hands doesn't feel right either. And frankly, Danny’s not sure what to do with that. 

So he gets out of the shower, dries, perfunctorily off, throws on his work clothes, and heads to the lobby to make coffee. He opens the front door out to the sea, to the morning, and there—sitting on the bench by the door, just barely warmed by the early morning sun—is Steve. Looking entirely bright eyed and bushy tailed, and holding a thermos of what Danny can only assume is coffee, and holding a Tupperware of something that smells suspiciously cinnamony.

“You did say coffee and sugar,” Steve says, standing, moving towards Danny, and holding them out like an offering. 

Danny looks at the thermos, looks at the box, looks at the man holding them, and really it’s probably partly because he’s vulnerable from the visions in his dreams, and because he really is weak for anyone who brings him coffee and pastry in the morning, but he reaches up, slides his hands into the hair that’s just as soft as it was in his dreams, and pulls until their lips meet, soft and warm and sighing like finding home.

Sometime into the kiss, Danny takes the thermos from Steve and walks them backwards into the lobby, setting the thermos down. Steve clues in, and sets the Tupperware down beside it, gasping as he then has hands free to wrap around Danny and pull him close, his grip so strong Danny’s knees nearly give way.

It’s not until they’re both very evidently hard (which doesn’t take long, given the intensity, the rightness of the kiss) that they pull apart.

“You weren’t kidding,” Steve says, gratifyingly breathless, grinning in what Danny's mind decides to label _his signature way,_ his eyes blown wide and gaze glassy.

“Huh?” Asks Danny eloquently.

“Coffee and sugar.” He waves to the containers on the side table by the door. 

They’re still standing in the middle of the lobby, which is the realization that hits Danny hardest. His hotel is known within the traveling-loving gay community as welcoming. Many of his repeat clientele are gay couples. He’s even helped run a few of those gay singles vacation events. (Alekos’s brainchild, unsurprisingly.) But he’s not super keen on becoming a demonstration in his own lobby. Not because there’s nothing of an exhibitionist in him. But, you know, professionalism and all.

So he grabs the thermos and the Tupperware, and leads Steve up to the pool deck. There’s cups at the bar, napkins and silverware as well. 

And, this time of the morning, _privacy._

They step out onto the pool deck, half the small-but-luxurious pool under the cover of the cavern-like enclosure, half exposed to the sun and other elements. The space itself is noteworthy, but of course it’s the view that’s the shining jewel in the hotel’s crown. 

Danny looks out at it, at the sight he can’t imagine he’ll ever tire of. The broad expanse of blue, framed by slopes of whitewashed buildings, soft and rounded, punctuated by splashes of color, mostly, again, blue. Dots of bougainvillea, predominantly bright magenta pink, some—like his—the softer shades towards white. Very little green. Very little any other color. It’s a cultivated look. More so than any place he’d ever been. Maybe it’s part of the draw. It’s just how it is, he’s never really questioned it, just known it was where he belonged. 

Steve walks to the far edge of the deck, taking in the full sweep of the vista. He doesn’t disappoint in the reactions department, although his reaction is slightly perplexing. 

“Okay, wow. This view _is_ amazing.” He sounds surprised, and even chuckles to himself. “Alright, I get it now.”

“Views not your thing?” Danny asks, curious. He’s settled in behind the counter, poured them cups of the coffee, which is gratifyingly strong. He can’t help the sigh of enjoyment tinged with that morning feeling of sheer relief when the first sip hits. Steve turns sharply toward him at the sound, and Danny’s dick surges back to fuller in a flash. 

“I like a good view,” comes the reply, eyes washing over Danny with an expression so heated he shivers. 

“But not of the sea?” Danny asks, savoring another sip. “Seems odd for a sailor.” 

Steve considers the point as though he’s not thought of it before. “I guess... I’m not used to thinking of it as a ‘view.’ It’s different when you’re on it, when your life depends on being aware of it. The sea isn’t something to... observe? Consume? It’ll consume _you_ if you think of it that way.”

“Mmmm,” Danny muses into his coffee, trying to not think of being consumed by the sea, but imagining being consumed by something else entirely. “I guess that makes sense.” He walks over to the edge of the deck with Steve’s coffee, hands it to him, but rather than take the cup, Steve wraps his hand over Danny’s on the mug. 

“I made it strong,” he says, all undertones and muted like it’s important to be quiet. “Figured you’d like that.” Danny twitches at his implied meaning, wants to pull away, but can’t. “Because of the caffeine, making you a morning person,” Steve clarifies, and it’s an out, of course, but Danny doesn’t take it. He lingers in the real meaning, not denying, not confirming, just... letting the possibility exist.

Steve releases his hand, and Danny adds it to his own mug, turning fully towards the view, but not moving away from Steve’s reflected heat. It’s not something Danny would have imagined being so swept up in, so captivated by—heat in a hot climate. He’s got enough of that, the stones of the island hold it more than adequately, thanks. But it’s a different kind of heat, of course, and Danny already knows it’s thawing things inside him he didn’t think were still frozen. Things he’d forgotten existed. 

“It’s just a different view,” Danny says, continuing from Steve’s observations. “Like how the ocean looks different from the shore than it does from up high. The horizon is a different thing from the sky than it is from the water.”

Steve isn’t looking at the view any more. 

“Shore?” He asks, recognition in his tone. “You’re from Jersey.” It’s not a question, and Danny’s impressed. 

He nods, not meeting Steve’s gaze. Something tells him he would give too much away. Steve sees it anyway.

“You’re not going home either,” he says. It’s soft. Understanding.

Danny shrugs, sips his coffee to give him time. “It’s not home anymore. There’s family there. But I belong here. This is mine. This... it’s just _mine_.”

He’s not sure (because he knows Steve’s not been married, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t known loss), but he thinks, from the shift in his posture, the way he moves to look out at the view, uses the shift to also move closer to Danny, he thinks Steve’s acknowledging his meaning.

“That’s how I feel on the sea,” he admits. He sets his coffee carefully on the low wall, wraps one arm around Danny to steer his perspective, with the other points out the path he’d taken, sailing to the island.

Danny fades into the half-embrace, letting Steve’s words wash over him, _hmmming_ in reply where prompted, but mostly feeling the vibrations of his story, more than processing the words. That sense of familiarity he’d had, hearing his voice for the first time, is only amplified by feeling it. He leans more and more into Steve’s space, finds it already feels easy, comfortable, like he fits there. Belongs. 

There’s place belonging, and there’s people belonging. And sometimes the two are at odds. People we belong with who we can’t be with. Friends far away. Loved ones we’ve lost. And sometimes the two are the same, inexorably linked. Like Alekos, Marina, Thalia, and this island that’s his home. Sometimes. if we’re truly lucky, we find the people that _are_ our place. And where we are doesn’t matter. Danny had that once. He thought. And in the end it took from him the place he’d thought would always be home. This island means everything to him because it’s been his and his alone. He’s not sure what it would mean to find that again. That sense of place in a person. He’s not entirely sure he wants to find out. He _is_ sure he won’t be able to resist this pull. The gravitational weight of it is simply too heavy, and he has too little self-destructive capability left. Maybe the sun’s baked it all out of him. 

Steve’s paused in recounting his course, picked his coffee back up, but kept the one arm still around Danny. And he knows he should get more coffee, have some of that sugar. And he will. In a bit. For now, he feels something important has happened. And for now, he needs to just let it be.

But it’s not too long, or at least it feels not nearly long enough, before Steve’s the one to stir. 

“So where’s this wall that needs painting?” 

And it’s not like he didn’t walk right past it on his way in, and maybe Danny’s a little embarrassed he’s let himself get so far lost in the moment, so he chuckles, but he knows too that he’s not alert enough for physical labor yet. And partly that’s the mood, partly it’s lack of coffee, and partly it’s the blending of his two favorite kids of heat—sunshine, and incredibly hot guy cuddling him. _Ahem. Focus. Right._

“More coffee first,” he mutters, covering for his lack of attentiveness, and he steps towards the bar to refill—and to check out whatever that warm, sweet offering is within the plastic tub. 

Steve watches expectantly as Danny opens it, and the familiar scent of cinnamon that hits him reminds him of lazy Sunday mornings back home. 

“Good guess?” Steve asks, grinning, and Danny answers by breaking a bite right off the edge, not bothering to lift out a slice or use silverware or anything. 

“It’s not that I don’t love Greek pastry,” Danny says around his mouthful. “But it’s hard to beat homemade coffee cake, in my book.” He takes another bite. “I might have to ask for your recipe....”

Steve’s grin turns smug, and it’s a look that ordinarily makes Danny want to punch something, but on Steve it somehow works. “I’m glad you like it,” he says, and his tone doesn’t quite match the confidence of his expression, and that only endears him more to Danny’s far too softening heart.

Danny again covers his seeping emotions by turning to the edible things before him. “This coffee is amazing,” he says, as he refills Steve’s mug. It’s his one American concession here. He’ll serve retsina and ouzo, follow Greek rituals for most things food related. But coffee... coffee is sacred. And a nice Greek coffee is a fine afternoon pick me up, but his mornings still require a good old fashioned American brew. For Danny, and for his guests. 

“Kona,” Steve admits. “I can get used to pretty much anything else, but the coffee is still the best at home.”

“Hawaii?” Danny sputters. “Wow, really?” 

Steve laughs. “Says the Jersey guy living on a Greek island.”

Conversation—banter, really—devolves from there, and how it is he’s already so at ease, Danny doesn’t try to comprehend, he just accepts it. As though somehow it’s simply wound its way neatly around his defenses, found some secret passage he’d either not known about or forgotten, and just snuck right in, directly into that innermost place of knowing. 

It’s not too much longer before they’re out front with brushes and cans, and somehow Steve’s leading it, he almost might say “controlling it,” only it’s not like Danny minds letting someone else be in charge of the onerous task for once. 

Don’t get him wrong, Danny has no objections to physical labor that’s taken so much of his time the past five years, doesn’t ever feel the maintenance he does on his beloved hotel is anything other than perfectly worth his time. But it’s like anything else. It’s nice sometimes to not have to do it alone. 

No doubt Steve has his own objective he’s aiming for, whatever reasons he might be harboring. And it’s a remarkably short while before they’re stowing the cleaned brushes and washing the bits of white paint off their hands and arms. Which is of course when Thalia makes her presence known, introducing herself to Steve, never one to shy from a new acquaintance. Her gaze on him is light but assessing, in that way the Greeks have that makes you feel somehow more observed than any other people can. Some find it uncomfortable. Danny just finds it honest. He doesn’t mind that Steve squirms a little under her scrutiny, and notes a tint of pink washing his cheekbones, and sees Thalia catalog it as well.

“Don’t get sunburnt,” she calls as they make their excuses and head for the door. 

“She’s sweet,” Steve says once they’re safely out of earshot. “Clearly she’s fond of you.”

Danny smiles. “Not half as fond as I am of her. She’s the daughter I never had,” he says, absently. And then turns to more practical matters. “Here, we’ll just pop in here and get what I need for those sandwiches.” 

The tiny corner market caters primarily to locals, with a sort of outer covering of the usual tourist needs—postcards, bottled water, and sunscreen mostly. But the shopkeeper delights in stocking the things his neighbors on the hillside favor, and that includes a selection of Danny’s Italian style deli meats. He never knows which ones will be available, but that only adds to the fun, and he comes up with scrumptious new creations every time. Today meets a spicy little _capicola_ which will pair beautifully with the crusty freshly baked bread and a rich creamy mustard Danny also selects, and—washed down with a couple of the local beers—should do the trick nicely. Steve picks up one of those disposable underwater cameras, and Danny eyes him suspiciously. 

“The point is to be _on_ the boat, correct?” 

Steve laughs. 

Danny rolls his eyes before he thinks to censor himself, and that only makes Steve laugh more. 

By the time they make it down to the dock where Steve’s boat is moored, Danny’s hot enough and sweaty enough he’s not sure he’d object to a swim—even if he realizes he’s not exactly dressed for that possibility. Well. He hadn’t been entirely unprepared for the possibility of getting naked. So if some water is involved, that’ll only be refreshing, right? 

The boat is, quite frankly, beautiful. Danny’s not exactly a boat fanatic, but even he can appreciate the sleek lines, the tidy appearance, the shiny white and green paint, the neatly trimmed sails. She’s well-loved, this boat.

“Doris?” Danny asks, eyeing the script adorning the bow. 

“Mom,” Steve says simply. “Died when I was young.”

He jumps aboard then, leaving no room for Danny to react, and he takes that as his cue, handing Steve the bag of food before stepping carefully aboard himself. He’s accustomed enough to boats due to necessity, so he slips his shoes off easily, stowing them in the deck box Steve indicates, before they both head below deck to put the food away. 

It’s tidy and well cared for inside just as it is atop, and if Danny’d had to guess, he never would have imagined she belonged to someone who lived full time aboard. There’s no personal memorabilia, and Danny’s not one for displaying tokens of home himself, but it feels like someone who has intentionally deleted bits of himself and is existing in the spaces in between. 

He’s taken out of his observations by Steve’s close proximity and a stubbled nuzzle at his neck. 

“Let’s get her out to sea, shall we?” He says, to Danny’s ear as he kisses it, and Danny lets him feel his answering shiver.

Danny sits out of the way at the bow while Steve performs all the necessary preparations. Watching him in his element is... stunning. He’s clearly at home on a boat, patently belongs on the sea. And part of Danny’s heart sputters in the wake of that realization, the sense that taking Steve from the water would be like asking a fish to live on dry land. 

He doesn’t get to wallow for long, because there’s a nice breeze, and soon he forgets his sweaty worries and finds he’s utterly swept away by the gliding of the hull across the deep blue waves.

Danny’s torn, between watching the shoreline whoosh by, and watching Steve at the helm. He’s definitely got a thing about people who are competent, and Steve is a more than competent sailor. It’s compelling, and more than a little sexy. Besides, he’s seen the island from the water before. So it’s hardly surprising when he settles in, leaning back against some ropes, and enjoys the view. 

It’s not long before Steve notices he’s being watched, and he damn near preens like a fucking peacock. 

Once he’s got their course set, heading out further to sea, going at a leisurely clip, the sailing surprisingly smooth, he gestures for Danny to join him. There’s a sort of alcove to the side of the actual helm, a cozy, cushioned spot, with pillows and a light blanket, and it’s not technically a big enough space for a man as tall as Steve to sleep comfortably, but Danny imagines he probably does. There’s a real bed inside, of course, surprisingly spacious—yes, Danny noted that when he was down there, so sue him—but somehow it seems fitting that Steve would be the kind to literally sleep at the wheel. Not implying carelessness, no, by no means. Implying, rather, that he’s the sort to never be not “on the job.” It, too, is a compelling thought. He’s clearly the committed, dedicated type, and, yes, Danny finds that attractive. Powerfully so. 

They arrange themselves on the cushions so they’re looking forward, to where they’re headed—backs to the sun, the view unobstructed and the sailing clear—and yeah, okay, that feels symbolic to Danny, more than a little. Conversation drifts, gently. Not touching further on either of their lightly remarked upon pasts. It’s as though they’ve both seen within the other some reflection of their own pain, their own hurts, and agreed to leave it at that, for now, at least. Not that where they’ve been isn’t important to who they are, obviously it is. But it’s background to what they might build beyond it. 

It’s a slightly odd sensation for Danny. He’s been so firmly attached to his hurts, his wounds. They’ve felt so active a part of his being, so foundational to who he is, what he’s become. But that’s shifted, somehow. It’s almost as though this connection between them exists outside the space of that context. Like it reaches beyond that kind of constraint. It’s simultaneously freeing and gives him the sense of their meeting being almost pre-ordained, and that’s not the kind of fancy Danny’s predisposed to having. He’s used to being much more pragmatic than all that nonsense. But it doesn’t feel like he’s being given a choice. And, completely honestly, it’s an amazingly relaxing thing to allow. 

So it’s without over-analyzing either his feelings or how it might seem to Steve, that Danny allows himself to settle against Steve, resting his back against that broad chest, enjoying the feeling—the phrase “I’ve got your back” passing, unprompted, through his mind, the implication stirring things in him, the sense of being on a team with someone, being part of a pair, a duo... partners. In a way he never has been before. And it’s nearly like some kind of past-life recall, the sort of thing Thalia might wax poetic about, with her tales of Greek myths and legends, and archetypes reflected in the present day. 

Comparing Steve to the Platonic ideal of a literal Greek god maybe wasn’t the wisest choice of things with which to occupy his brain, though it doesn’t escape his notice that Steve’s own breathing isn’t exactly sedate. 

They’ve ended up on the topic of sports, and _of course_ Steve was the star quarterback. Not that Danny ever had fantasies about that or anything.... Um. But it is fun to engage in the old baseball-funding-versus-football-funding debate (Danny’s baseball induced inferiority complex ready to bristle back to the forefront though it’s less the sore-spot it once was), and of course Steve’s point that bats and gloves are longer lasting, regs more constant, than the ever-changing requirements for football’s protective gear is expected (as is his point that a truly great tackle tears up the turf more than diving for that fly ball ever could), there’s still that sense of injustice just under Danny’s skin, that one sport be valued more highly than the other, regardless of equipment costs. 

“Well, the debilitating injury rate is higher in football,” Steve insists, as though it’s part of the equation. 

“Why’d _you_ stop playing?” Danny asks, thinking of course about his own career-ending injury, but wanting to make a point, not bring up painful memories—so the sudden stilling of Steve’s chest brings a sinking feeling to Danny’s own. 

“Not because of injury,” he finally admits, as his breathing resumes.

And Danny won’t push. Not now. But he’s suddenly sure he knows, and he’s sure it has to do with the name Steve’d given his boat. Instead, he turns in Steve’s arms and draws him into a kiss, and Steve’s either grateful for the distraction, or he’s just glad to get his tongue back in Danny’s mouth, because it’s not long before they’ve slid off the cushioned seat and onto the less-soft but more-spacious decking below, and this time they don’t pull apart once it’s clear where they both want this to go, where this has been heading since before they ever even said _hello._

There’s one flash of a moment where Danny almost suggests they take this inside, to that nice wide bed, but the thought is swiftly lost in the swoosh of his blood as Steve reaches inside his pants and pulls his dick free. They do separate long enough to get their clothes off, and it’s not like being fully naked is exactly necessary for kisses and hand jobs, and it’s not like either of them has the patience for more, after the hours of pent up sexual tension that’s been layered under everything they’ve said and done since that first moment, that first touch, but it feels important, somehow. For their skin to be bare, for the whole of them, of this, of their joining, to be seen by the sky, by the sun, by the sea. As though Apollo and Poseidon, and maybe even Zeus himself, would bless their coming together. 

They don’t. Come together, that is. Steve pulls Danny on top of him, exposing the full of his back to the searing heat of the early afternoon sun, pulling him to completion across Steve’s expansive chest, and it’s his gasps, his shuddering near-collapse onto that chest, now painted in Danny’s come, that brings Steve toward his own release. Danny balances briefly on one arm, his other hand slick with Steve’s pre-come, and it’s not even two full pumps before Steve’s damn near shouting Danny’s name, and yes, that’s one of the most powerful things Danny’s ever felt. He’s not entirely sure if the whole thing’s amplified because of the sea, or the sun, or just the goddamn fresh air, or what, but holy fuck that was intense.

“Better get you out of the sun,” Steve wheezes out as he comes down from that high, and Danny’s somehow giddy from it all, because his response is to laugh and joke: 

“Trying to get me in your bed?”

Only, Steve’s eyes flash with instantly renewed heat and longing, and Danny shuts right the fuck up and kisses him. Hard. 

Steve pulls back, shoving at Danny’s chest like he has to keep him away or they won’t move. 

“Seriously. Inside. Now. Or we’ll both burn, and that won’t be fun.”

Danny grabs their clothes, and climbs down the short ladder to the cabin, but makes no move to put his clothes back on, and when Steve follows and reaches out, presumably for Danny to hand him his clothes, he simply shoves them behind him, and grins. 

“That’s how you want to play it?” Steve asks, tone all amusement and fondness and something more Danny’s heart thumps recklessly at, but refuses to acknowledge. 

“I don’t see how clothes possibly serve a purpose right now,” is Danny’s reply, though his mind supplies a more accurate _I’m afraid if we put our clothes back on my insecurity will come back with it and I’m not done with your body just yet._

He must think that last bit a little too loudly, because it sure seems like Steve hears it, and reacts, pulling him into a slow, tender, leisurely kiss that says more than most post-coital conversations Danny’s had in his entire life. 

“Okay,” Steve says, softly, warmly, eyes shining like he’s utterly, utterly lost. “How about you feed me those fabulous sandwiches you promised, and we can stay naked. But first let me at least have my shorts so I can get us anchored so we don’t drift somewhere dangerous.”

Danny reluctantly hands Steve just his underwear, and rather enjoys the bare-chested view, as he stands in the doorway watching Steve navigate to a place he can drop anchor safely, before Danny turns to the galley to prepare the food. 

They eat the sandwiches in bed, peppered with kisses and blow jobs and beers, and the sun's gotten very low in the sky before Steve suggests they get dressed and head for home. 

And yeah, he says _home,_ and Danny isn’t about to point it out.

The sun is just hitting the horizon as they sail into the cove, slowing nearly to a standstill as they stand on the deck watching the sun sink into the water, as though standing for it is a show of respect. A way of saying thank you for this day, and what it’s meant. 

They meander slowly up the hill, no real plan in mind, no discussion of what’s next, what they do from here, where this might go, where it possibly could. Just simply being. It’s a mode of existing that had been utterly unfamiliar to Danny prior to his life on the island, and he thinks somehow it’s new but in a different way for Steve. He’s been existing, Danny’s sure of it now, in the negative spaces of life—the places of absence, of missing, of loss—rather than the positives. And Danny’s not some kind of rescue service, he left his savior complex behind when he left law enforcement. But he thinks just that little bit that Steve’s found something in him. And he’s not so egotistical as to imagine he’s the solution to everything, but people can be keys that open doors. They can even be doorways that open where you’d sworn there was none. And Danny feels a little bit like one of those decorative doorways the island is known for—no wall on either side, simply a path to step through. The marking of a passage to the realization that there’s something on the other side, if you only look at it right. 

They’re passing Marina’s when they hear a clearing of the throat, and stumbling to a stop (they’ve been walking arms around each other, which isn’t the easiest way to climb the hill, but it had felt important), they see her standing in the archway to her garden, sack held out to them, smile full of sunshine and insinuation. 

“Thought you would need food,” she says simply, and winks as Danny accepts the bag gratefully. 

Steve gets his hand slapped when he tries to give her money, and he kisses her on the cheek instead, which she allows. 

“She always like that?” Steve asks in an undertone as they turn the corner.

“Bossy?” Danny asks with a chuckle. “Yep. She’s decided you belong here,” he adds, unthinkingly, only realizing once he’s said it that it’s true, and he falters as it hits him, but when he looks to Steve to gauge his reaction he sees glistening at the edges of his eyes, reflecting the twinkly lights hung in the vines along the path—which is when Danny knows. 

It’s been a long time since Steve belonged anywhere other than the sea. 

*

Danny leaves Thalia a note that they’re back, then they take the food up to the pool deck. The sun is still painting the white of the island in a soft peach, deepening to hints of cherry at the edges. The pool lights flicker on, adding that ethereal watery blue glow to the nightscape. Danny lights the lanterns at the corners of the deck, savoring as he always does the ambiance they create, almost like it casts a spell over the enclosed space—a bubble within the larger bubble of the island. 

Steve meanwhile, eager to see what Marina’s given them, has been making himself at home behind the bar, setting out plates and silverware, and opening the containers, sniffing assessingly. 

Danny pours them _retsina_ without asking, and if part of him thinks of it like it’s a test, well he won’t admit it. He carries the drinks over to a table close to the edge, but not the best one, in case any guests decide to take in the night view as well. There are only a handful of guests at the hotel tonight. And most, he knows, will be at The Two Brothers well into the night. He thinks briefly about taking Steve there. But he’s not quite ready for that yet. Not for Alekos’s assessment of Steve—which he could pretty much guess at—but he thinks probably Steve could use some preparation before being exposed to Danny’s best friend, who can be a bit much to take if you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. 

He heads back the bar to check out the food that has Steve so captivated, and he’s distracted enough in his thoughts that when Steve pulls him into a kiss, it catches him off guard, in the best possible way. 

“Mmmm,” he says when Steve releases him. “You’ve started without me.” Steve blinks in confusion, so Danny gestures to the food. “I’d recognize Marina’s _dolmades_ anywhere,” he whispers, and kisses Steve again to make his point.

All the food is chilled mezze, presumably because she’d been unsure when they’d be back, but it is nonetheless stupendous. They each plate up a selection, then Danny stows the rest in the under counter fridge, before they settle at their table, and Steve offers a toast. 

“To making your home where you find it,” he says, eyes like embers searing onto Danny’s skin. 

“To belonging,” Danny echoes, then watches as Steve takes a sip.

If he’s expecting Steve to sputter, to react to the pungent wine, he’s pleasingly surprised when instead Steve ahhs and sighs contentedly. 

“Now there’s a taste I’ve not known in a long time.”

“You know _retsina_?” Danny asks, a little surprised, as Steve’s given the impression he hasn’t spent much time in Greece before. 

Steve looks at him, eyes twinkling mysteriously. “A man can’t give away all his stories in one go, Daniel,” he says, then drinks again, fortunately missing the way his use of Danny’s full name has made him quiver.

They eat what could probably be considered just enough to refuel, and it’s not like they couldn’t eat more later, but Danny’s spent much of the meal deciding something, and by the time they’ve both slowed their munching he’s nearly made up his mind, so once they’re done he clears the plates and excuses himself saying he’ll be right back. 

When he gets to the desk, he sees Thalia has been back while he was upstairs, and she’s left her report of the day, printed out for him to see, which is slightly unusual in that she’d ordinarily email it to him. On it she notes that she’s had the cleaners into the suite at the top of the hotel. The one that doesn’t get used all that often. The most expensive one, the one ordinarily reserved for special events—like small weddings and lavish honeymoons. There’s no _real_ reason she’d have done it today. It’s been on her list, because she hates to start the season less than fully prepared, and because they’ve had last-minute elopement ceremonies before, booked the literal day-of. 

But she’s guessed right on two counts. One, that Danny might like to show the suite off to his new friend, and two, that he might _not_ like to have Steve in his personal quarters which are not exactly the kind of tidy one might wish one’s rooms to be when bringing a new lover home for the first time.

He grabs the keys to the suite, leaves her a note of thanks, and heads back to the pool, suddenly unaccountably anxious. 

When he gets back to the pool deck, it’s not like he expects to see Steve looking out to sea like a landed mariner, lost while he’s not on the water, but he certainly doesn’t expect him to have washed the goddamn dishes. He’s toweling the last of the plates as Danny steps onto the deck, and the sight of the man doing chores, well it’s nearly as sexy as watching him captain his boat had been. Dishes are another of those—of course you could do it yourself, but fuck it’s nice to have help. 

It’s a couple beats before Steve notices he’s back, and Danny thinks he manages to get the “surprised and turned on” expression off his face before Steve turns and sees him watching. 

“I, uh, um,” Danny stammers, trying to work out how to offer to show Steve the suite without directly asking him to sleep over. He holds up the key. “Wanna see my best room?” 

He literally could facepalm in embarrassment from selecting the actual worst way he could have phrased it. 

Steve either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care or had been himself hoping Danny would ask.

“I’d love to.”

Danny manages to not embarrass himself further as he nods to the stairs off the side of the patio, and starts to lead the way. 

The un-railed steps are not steep, as they meander up the side of the cluster of buildings, little alcove-like porches adorned with tiny tables, two chairs, and an umbrella on each, small pots of flowers dotting here and there, but Danny almost wishes for something to hold as he climbs—worrying about his balance, given the state of his head. He feels not unlike a teenager whose parents are out of town. This is _his_ hotel, dammit. He can use any of the rooms however he likes. 

Telling himself that isn’t exactly helping.

They get to the top, and the view of the sea from the pool deck is of course sublime, but from further up, the more compelling view is actually of the hotel itself, the balconied rooms laid out beneath them, a set of steps fanning out, the space on the hillside that belongs to Danny. It seems utterly unreal even now, years later, that such a thing should be possible. He gets overwhelmed by it, any given day when he comes up here to observe his property—like some minor lord surveying his land from the upper rampart. 

His eyes shift to Steve, and the look on his face is impressed, certainly. Appreciative, yes. But more importantly: like he sees what Danny saw when he first fell in love with the place.

“I get why you wanted to stay,” he says, meeting Danny’s eyes at last. “It would be hard to leave this, knowing it exists.”

Which is so close to how it’d felt to Danny back then. How could he wish to be anywhere else when this place was real. Hearing the words from Steve’s lips, though, brings a whole new layer to his own experience of that sensation, and he’s trying to steady himself through the emotion of it when Steve takes the keys from him, and steps toward the door. 

Thalia has played it perfectly, bless her, setting the scene without being obvious about it. The living room of the suite is frequently done up for special events, so that it feels even more special than the sleek and stunning but minimalist room would, all on its own. She’s kept it more sedate today, but the feeling is still there—that sense of hospitality that is her unique touch to the property. 

Pomegranates, quince, grapes, and figs adorn a rustic clay platter on the wide coffee table in front of the patio door, the sofa one of those curved, low, built-in ones typical to the cave-like rooms on the island. On the narrow bar that constitutes one half the small but functional kitchen sits a bowl of orchid blossoms, floating in water like tiny ships on a placid sea. There’ll be potted orchids in the bathroom during the season, Danny knows. But the symbolic touch here makes him smile. 

Steve’s gone to the door, slid it open to admire the view, but not stepped outside, and Danny himself can’t seem to move from the entryway. Maybe it’s that he’s holding himself back from saying “the bed is amazing, wanna see?” Because he’s pretty sure if he opens his mouth that’s what will come out. And to be fair, the bed _is_ amazing. And he wouldn’t mind seeing Steve naked on it. But he’s feeling oddly uneasy about flat out suggesting it, even though surely his intention in bringing Steve to the room isn’t exactly obscured. 

Steve seems to feel uneasy about precisely nothing, and looks perfectly at home—as though _he_ owns the place and is showing it off to Danny. He plucks a grape from the platter on the table, steps toward the kitchen where he jostles the bowl of orchids so they resemble ships tossed about on a stormy sea, and turns expectantly to face Danny.

“You gonna show me the bedroom?”

And his tone is heated, but it’s also amused, and that combination sets Danny back into himself a bit, back on more solid ground. 

“I thought you’d never ask,” he says, a little more truthfully than he intends. 

Steve chuckles, and nods for him to lead the way, and Danny does—this time aware that it might very well be his ass and not the scenery that Steve’s got his eye on, an assumption verified when he stops, just inside the cavernous space of the bedroom’s entryway, and Steve sidles up behind him, hands sliding down his rear, nuzzling into his ear, and whispering “Please tell me this is one of those hotels that has its guest’s best interests at heart.”

And, yeah, of course it does, but his usual sass refuses to make an appearance, and instead Danny leans into the heat of Steve, and mindlessly murmurs in reply: “In the bathroom.”

“Good, I’d like a shower first anyway.”

It’s a shock of cold as Steve steps away, and maybe that’s why he’s slow on the uptake, but when he doesn’t follow, Steve swoops back and grabs him by the hand. 

“A lot more fun if you join me.”

Steve whistles, actually whistles, when he steps into the bathroom and turns on the light. And yeah, that’s gratifying too. It’s all smooth sculpted surfaces, wide spacious counter, large open shower—more than spacious enough for two, and, you know, _activities_. The shower-head flows from above, falling down upon the occupants like rain, which is a refreshing feature on an island that sees little of it. Danny’s been known to indulge in the occasional shower up here himself, those times when the suite stands otherwise empty for months on end. He’s never shared it with another, though. And he’s glad now for that, though he’s not really sure why. 

Steve steps easily out of his clothes. Aware Danny’s watching, but not taking any special care to perform. He doesn’t wait for Danny, simply turns the water on and moves beneath it in a way that seems almost reverent, which is when it occurs to Danny that while this shower is luxurious to him, it must be absolutely palatial to Steve, and that slows things for him, wanting to allow Steve the chance to truly savor the experience. He leans back against the white-plastered wall, watches as Steve does indeed seem to be savoring the water running over his tanned, tattooed skin. It’s a good few minutes before Steve notices he has an audience. A very appreciative audience.

“Gonna join me?” He asks, holding out a hand. “Or are you enjoying the show?”

“Yes,” Danny replies. _Obviously._

Steve laughs, that warm, easy laugh Danny thinks he’s in danger of becoming unreasonably fond of, steps out of the spray towards Danny, and starts divesting him of his clothes. 

Shirt first—pulled simply over his head, wet fingers leaving cooling trails across Danny’s sun-hot skin. Steve tugs him closer, to get his pants unbuttoned, takes the opportunity of their closeness to capture Danny’s mouth in a searing kiss, and Danny doesn’t complain when his underwear ends up soaked, because he doesn’t plan on putting them back on any time soon. 

Once they’re both under the water, Steve turns to washing Danny with the same focus, the same resolve with which he faced down the paint-deprived wall that morning. 

It’s high quality, the hotel soap. Lightly scented of figs, lathering richly but not exuberantly, and large enough to not be lost in Steve’s substantial grip. He’s _thorough._ Washing Danny like it’s important—as though he might be judged on the performance. 

Once they’re both more than clean, and Danny feels more pampered than he can remember feeling in a long time, Steve shuts off the water and steps toward the luxuriantly fluffy white towels. He dries Danny first, staying dripping wet as though it’s nothing unusual, as though being wet is a natural state for him, which Danny supposes it probably is. There’s something almost aquatic about him. And it’s not just the sailor thing, not just the Navy thing. He just seems like he belongs to the sea. Danny wonders if it feels weird to him to have solid ground beneath his feet—which is when Danny realizes he’s got a little bit of that _re-adjusting to land after being on the water_ thing himself, and he sways slightly. 

Fortunately, Steve’s already got his hands on him, so he doesn’t go far. 

“Okay there?” Steve asks almost gently, concerned. “Got a lot of sun, maybe you should have some water.”

And the theme of the day is so much water, Danny actually laughs, and it might come out slightly manic, which probably decides Steve that he’s right, so when Danny finds himself being guided to the mattress, glass of water held out to him, he thinks he would be wise to drink it. He’s not certain it helps, but it gives him time to gather his thoughts, and once he’s taken the time to drink it all down, he turns to Steve, takes the towel away, and with his eyes only and not any words lets Steve know it’s _his_ turn. 

He lays Steve out on the bed. Centered on the oversized mattress, like that’s symbolic, like it’s important Steve understand. The sleeping alcove embraces them, cocoons them, in soft, muted light, in that cave-like, primal feeling. It’s constraining and yet somehow freeing in its containment. A bubble of space, an echo chamber that redirects each sound, each breath, back in on them, heightening the sense they’re the only ones in the world, the only two who matter, and in this moment, it feels utterly true. 

Steve’s not used to this kind of attention, Danny knows it, as he kisses along his arm, towards his chest—that chest that felt so right supporting him earlier, in the sun, on the sea. Here it’s Danny who supports Steve, not by holding him up, but by holding him _down,_ pressing an assessment of worth onto his still-damp skin. He feels the quivers as Steve fights against himself. Knows with a fierce certainty it overwhelms him, that for all his bluster, all his bravado, Steve is more at ease being the care _-er_ than the cared _-for._ And Danny can’t say why, but he feels sure, _he’s_ the one to do it, he’s the one to finally convince this gorgeous man beneath him it’s about damn time he let that change.

Once Danny’s catalogued a portion of Steve’s scars (not the larger ones, but the ones he thinks Steve might not himself remember) he crawls atop him, aligning himself to cover him, skin along skin, the heat from the sun still warming them both, and he waits, breathing, being, settling—feeling the fit of their bodies, the humidity of breath and shower steam, the friction that moist but not slick skin creates, till he feels Steve start to get lost in the tidal pull, the cosmic swirling, the whooshing of their blood, amplified, contained... heightened by the space, the moment, the focus, the attention.

Only then does Danny start to kiss him. Slowly, lightly, building so gradually a lesser man might give in to frustration and flip the tables, wresting control away in an impatience for _more..._ but Steve doesn’t. Steve gives in, more completely, the slower Danny goes, and it does almost feel tidal as he builds, incrementally, on the waves of breath and kisses, until Steve is absolutely, fully, completely under his sway. Danny could ask anything. Divest him of all his secrets, all his desires. Elicit any promise, any vow. But what he _wants_ is to _give._ To bestow. To give to Steve one fraction of the knowledge of his own worth that he’s not been given in his life—whatever the cause, whatever the injury, whatever the hurt. He feels the moment Steve’s body gets it, even if he’s not aware fully himself, and only then does Danny reach for the box Steve’s placed on the ledge by the side of the bed. 

“God, please, yes,” Steve gasps, when he hears the packaging release, the crinkle of cellophane sealing the supplies within, loud in the shell-like room. 

Danny flips open the full-size bottle, thanking himself for his foresight in wanting his guests to be as fully prepared as he might himself wish to be, and begins to open the utterly receptive man beneath him. It’s a process that borders too easily on clinical, but Danny prides himself on his ability to maintain the focus he’s so carefully curated, such that he’s confident Steve feels nothing so much as cared for. Given the sounds filling the swirling space that surrounds them, he can feel through his skin he’s succeeding. Once Steve’s easily taking three of Danny’s fingers, he pulls out, wipes his hand on the cloth so thoughtfully provided, and slides a condom on himself, adding more lube and waiting—for his breathing to still, for his body to calm, for his mind to catch up... some combination of all three. Steve squirms on the bed, adjusting himself, panting in need and longing in the most fucking alluring way Danny could imagine. So open, so willing, so wanting. Danny’s heart spills, it’s almost too much. He presses in, slow at first, then as Steve tries to speed it up, he follows, letting his own need swell to meet Steve’s, till they’re merged into one and Danny feels now himself like the proverbial Greek god, reaching, mounting, surpassing that plateau of heady, cerebral awareness and crashing like the waves on the black lava rocks on the other side of the island, falling into the abyss of coital unawareness, surging and receding in unrelenting bliss until they really do crash against the walls of reality as the most intense orgasm Danny’s ever had hits nearly painfully hard, and he collapses against Steve’s thankfully supportive body, only seconds ahead of Danny, but aware enough to keep them both from actually getting hurt. 

He drifts, vaguely aware, as Steve moves ably, settling him safely, cleaning them both, disposing of the cloth and the condom, and wrapping them in the almost fluid linen blanket, taking that cocooning metaphor one step further—and sealing whatever bond they’ve created up with them in the fabric, pulling Danny close, whispering murmured nonsense that means more than any words that have ever been spoken. 

And finally, they sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whew* And that's the first chapter! Chapter two on Wednesday.
> 
> (Content note: previous relationship between Danny and an original character, with whom he’s still friends.)


	2. Chapter 2

It’s the bright crack of early dawn when Steve wakes Danny with kisses. Slowly he works his way down, settling between his legs to open him first with his tongue, then less patiently with his fingers before sliding in, and Danny’s still that little bit sleepy, fuzzy around the edges, and the sharp pain of their pleasure is blunted in the soft yellow light as they slip once more off to sleep.

When they wake next, it’s to the muted sounds of the morning thrushes, no doubt seeking crumbs amongst the terraces, and to the quiet sounds of early risers, mindful of the later sleepers in their midst. Danny grins when Steve mutters something about the coffee maker in the kitchen, and Steve’s grinned response to his reply that _of course it’s a real one, none of that by-the-cup hotel nonsense_ , makes Danny’s heart flutter. 

They sit on the patio, sculpted low walls providing cover for their bare legs which tangle in lazy intimacy at odds with their short time together. It’s heaven, and Danny can’t let himself think about how it will end.

“Can we swim?” Steve asks, setting his empty second cup on the small table beside him.

And as much as Danny loves sitting by his pool, he doesn’t often use it. But he regrets not having got Steve in the water yesterday while they were at sea, so he nods. “I’ve got a suit you can borrow,” he says, before he thinks about that, about letting Steve into his rooms or pointlessly climbing back up to the suite. But the coffee cake is still in the kitchenette at the pool, and that’s what decides it. Morning sugar and cinnamon being a powerful motivator. 

They throw their pants on, leaving shirts and underthings and padding barefoot down the back stairs to Danny’s private rooms. He hears Thalia softly singing in the shower as he lets them quietly into the living area. 

It’s... frankly a fucking mess. There’s no dirty dishes, at least, because he almost never eats in his own kitchen, doesn’t even have a coffee maker of his own—he shoves the thought that attempts to follow that observation before it can settle in his mind and give him false hopes. But Danny hasn’t folded and put away laundry... ohh probably in about five years? He doesn’t even own a dresser. The back of the living room chair holds his chore clothes, and his linen slacks and shirts at least hang, tidily, in the small closet alcove. Mostly, it simply doesn’t feel like a home. More an enlarged sleep and changing space. Which, in fairness, is how he uses it. 

Danny rustles around on the swimsuit and lounge clothes section of the sofa to find trunks for them both. When he turns to Steve, to hand him a pair, he catches an assessing look in his eyes.

Steve starts to say something, but Danny stops him. 

“I know, it looks like I haven’t unpacked. Thalia complains about it regularly. But I’m just not in my rooms that much, and when I am, it’s to sleep.” He shrugs, hoping that didn’t come across as defensive as it felt.

Steve’s look softens. “I don’t mind,” he says, and if when he kisses Danny it feels like that’s the more important part of his reply, feels like he’s saying _I know, me too,_ well. Maybe he’s just being fanciful, maybe not. 

They head back up to the pool deck, stopping to set the coffee maker in the lobby before sliding into the unseasonably warm water. He keeps it warmer than a pool typically would be, so it’s somewhere between a pool and a spa, befitting the smaller size. It’s not really enough to do laps, but it is enough to have a nice float, have a good splash. Steve seems the lap-swimming-type, but he looks just as contented to pull Danny through the water to him, pressing a wet kiss to his lips, and grinning in pure delight, as though being in the water with him is something magical. 

When Danny does swim, it’s usually at night. With the sky dark and the island’s lights reflecting up to the stars as much as the stars shine down on the island. Morning swimming isn’t something that’s ever drawn him in, though he has a number of guests who relish it, and have attempted to convert him. He’s always felt he ought to be more awake before risking drowning, but somehow Steve makes it feel right. And that, almost more than anything else, settles somewhere within his chest, with that slightly uncomfortable feeling that something important has changed, and can’t ever change back.

They lay out in the sun after, having first scarfed down most of the coffeecake. And Danny knows he has actual work to do today, but the way Steve’s looking at him, there’s really only one thing he wants to spend the day doing. 

“I, uh... I have something I need to do today,” Steve says, reluctance plain in his tone, breaking Danny’s thought process. “But can I see you tonight?” 

Danny smiles, hopes he doesn’t look too relieved. “I have work to do, too, so yeah, that would be great.”

“But first... I’d like to use that amazing shower again....” Steve stands, holding his hand out to Danny, who wills himself to wait till they’re naked under the luxurious fall of water before he gets completely hard, thank you. 

He almost manages. 

Steve’s less thorough with the soap this time, far more interested in using his tongue to clean Danny, and how he manages to breathe while he sucks Danny to glorious completion while under the deluge of shower spray, Danny thinks must be some kind of super secret Navy technique, for which he almost regrets not paying US taxes anymore. 

He waits till they’ve shut the water off, leading Steve back to that echoed alcove of the bed, before using up a good deal more of that full-size bottle, sinking down on Steve’s really wonderful cock (and no, he won’t be informing Marina just how right she was), and allowing himself to be absolutely, uncharacteristically selfish in taking what he needs, attempting to lose himself in the overwhelming sensations, the sensory input, the sheer radiant heat and energy and longing that pours off Steve’s body just the way the water flooded over both of them in the shower. He’s trying so hard not to think about how _not_ having this will feel, it’s nearly all he feels. His surprising second, though less powerful, orgasm gives him one brief moment of oblivion, before it all crashes down on him.

Steve, who is possibly more insightful than his easygoing nature would suggest, kisses Danny down from it, pulling out and finishing across his chest, doing his damndest to make Danny feel worthy of such adoration. 

“Hey,” Steve says after, holding him close, soothing, shushing, ignoring the mess between them. “I’m not going to presume to know what that was about, but I should tell you, I’m planning on being on the island for a while, and... I’m not asking you to keep up this fantastic level of hospitality.” He waves at their surroundings. “But I haven’t minded sleeping on land, and if you’ll have me, I’d love to stay with you in your cozy... if slightly untidy... rooms downstairs.”

Danny feels the tension break within his chest, and a bubble of laughter bursts from his lips. “Am I that transparent?”

“A little,” Steve admits, pressing soft kisses along Danny’s cheek. 

“Yeah, okay,” he replies. “I’d like that very much.”

“Good. I’ll bring some things when I come back tonight. But right now I think we’d better use that shower one more time.”

They manage to get clean this time, and dried, and clothed, only stopping a few times to kiss, though Danny’s not completely sure he doesn’t end up with an actual hickey, fortunately low enough on his shoulder it probably won’t show as long as he keeps his shirt buttoned. 

By the time he walks Steve out the front door of the hotel, having made plans to watch the sunset from the pool deck, over the rest of Marina’s mezze platter from the night before, Thalia’s ensconced at the desk, doing an excellent job of looking busy. 

“Marina was right,” she says, when Danny joins her, pouring himself a cup from the pot she’s freshly brewed for him. 

“About?” Danny asks, unable to not ask, though he’s pretty sure it would be the wiser choice.

“He really is very pretty,” she replies, just as a guest appears down the stairs, leaving Danny holding himself back from the swat on the arm he’d otherwise have given her.

*

Danny does actually have real work to get done, and he surprises both himself and Thalia by managing to do it, despite his utterly distracted state, for which she mostly avoids teasing him this time, and don’t think he’s not aware of the significance of that.

They stop for lunch, joining the handful of guests who are ensconced by the pool—the bolder few full out in the afternoon sun, the wiser majority tucked up under the overhang, toes dangling in the water, or sprawled across the padded loungers, sporting everything from sunglasses and not much else to long flowing sundresses that look like they came to the island directly from Danny’s retired-hippie aunt’s guest room closet. 

One of the guests is a minor celebrity, taking advantage of the not-here-yet side of the season to have a get-away with friends before heading off to some secret, remote location to film the latest arthouse film with the most complicated plot Danny’s ever tried to listen to. 

“I shouldn’t be telling you anyway, darling,” she coos, patting him on the head when he admits he’s lost. “But I’ve been telling anyone who will listen because I’m sure I’ve got it at least half wrong, and the twisted fuck who wrote it is notorious for changing the script every other damn day of filming anyway. Mostly I’m doing it because they cast me opposite the most _delicious_ pretty young thing, and I want to bask in her coming glory.” 

If everyone on the pool deck imagines she fully plans on basking in a whole lot more than that, no one points it out. 

As they all partake of the bowls of Greek salad and platters of cold grilled meat Marina’s sent over, a tall-masted ship sails sedately by, drawing the attention of the entire group. 

“It just looks so fitting,” one of the decidedly not-famous guests mutters, awe glistening in his un-sunglassed eyes. “Like, that’s the kind of ship that should sail here... not those sleek modern things that can’t remember what a ship is supposed to look like.”

The minor-starlet gasps in agreement. “Oh I know, they’re _horrific._ Everyone has one now, they’re so over-done. But _that,_ I’d do that in a _heartbeat_.”

“It’s sheer romance,” someone else agrees.

“Sex on the seas,” pipes up another. 

Thalia eyes Danny, and whether it’s because of his own recent seaward adventure, or because she’s thinking the same thing she knows he is (that she wishes the island had more options in the wooden sailboat arena, as it is indeed becoming increasingly popular, to the point they’ll start losing out to the islands that do have such boats that sail from their ports), he’s not entirely prepared to say. 

Conversation turns to favorite sailing stories then, and Danny slips off, leaving the guests in Thalia’s more than capable hands. 

Danny has some cleaning to do. Or rather, tidying up. 

It’s not that he wants to change who he is, and Steve’s already seen his “natural state,” as it were—and not run screaming, thank you for noticing. But, it is slightly uncomfortable for a guest, even one who’s had his tongue every-possible-where on Danny’s body, to have to move aside a stack of Danny’s underwear in order to sit on the sofa. Most things can at least go in the closet nook, especially once he decides to shove a side table from the living room inside it. It works surprisingly well, though he thinks an actual set of drawers would be kind of nice, now you mention it. 

He washes the few dishes on the open kitchen shelf, because he can’t actually remember the last time he’d used them, sets clean linens out on the small table that doubles as kitchen workspace, and opens the door to his private, enclosed patio area, realizing it’s been a while since he’d last been out here, and he really should get some fresh plants for the pots which have been empty ever since they got busy—you know, with actual guests, and he inadvertently let the original ones die from neglect. Still, he at least hoses the patio off, and sets out the folding table and two chairs, thinking it’d be a halfway decent spot for morning coffee if, say, you didn’t want to put any clothes on after a lovely bout of morning sex. 

You know, just, in theory.

From there, Danny moves on to the bedrooms. There is technically a second bedroom, though it holds mostly unpacked boxes and over-flow of storage for things like decorations for special events and holidays—including the completely horrible but really it’s for the best, fake Christmas tree. There’s not much to be done about the room now, so he just closes the door, and turns to his, which, all things considered, could be worse. 

It’s not completely unlike the one at the top of the stairs, although it is less palatial. The style at least is the same, low platform with thick mattress, curved, cave-like ceiling creating that cozy feeling he so loved about this place. Surely there’s something utterly human about wanting to live in what is basically man’s original dwelling. Danny swears it makes him feel more truly alive than any standard “four walls” he’s ever dwelt between. 

He changes the sheets, dusts the few surfaces, checks both bedside lamps work (not just the one he uses) and, for good measure, makes sure to put full bottles of fresh lube and a strip of condoms under each pillow. 

The bathroom is the one place that’s already tidy. _Obsessively tidy,_ some might say. He sets out a stack of extra towels, adds an extra bath mat, knowing the floor can get slippery when the shower sprays beyond the low wall that encloses it. His one concession to the luxury of the special suite upstairs is to open a bar of the “good” soap, which he sometimes, but not regularly, uses. The also-fig-scented candle is a regular feature, and if he lights it for a while now, it’s mostly to freshen the air, not that he’s trying to set any kind of mood. Besides, it’ll be hours before Steve shows up. 

Danny calls Thalia at the front desk to check she’s doing okay, then settles in on his now-cleared sofa to catch up on some emails and message board notices. 

He gets a bit lost in a thread on the inter-island hotel owners chat group, noticing he wasn’t the only one to note the new ship sailing through their waters this afternoon. There’s much speculation, and a couple rumors, but nothing more than guesses, and probably not very informed ones at that. Danny briefly considers asking Marina—who tends to know more than she reasonably should about all things island related, and has connections to the boating world—but he pushes the thought aside in favor of replying to a couple DMs from his favorite hoteliers on nearby islands, about their start-of-season preparations, and the life-choice consequences of white paint perpetually under your fingernails. 

It’s getting close to sunset when Danny decides to shower and change into something a little nicer before heading out to the pool deck to see if anyone else has had the same idea.

One of the couples from earlier is already there, in the water, leaning out the edge of the pool, sipping prepared cocktails from the help-yourself fridge Thalia keeps stocked with the packaged craft drinks Alekos entertains himself by creating. Danny grabs a bottle of minted soda water, nods to them, and sets about the typical night time preparations—lighting the torches and so on. He doesn’t notice Steve’s arrival till he feels his warmth behind him, gets a whiff of what he already recognizes as Steve’s signature scent, something salty (no doubt the sea air) mixed with something almost woodsy, maybe pine tar. 

“Can I kiss you, or are you on duty?” He asks, softly, near Danny’s ear, making him shiver. 

Danny grins, and turns to face him. “Yes, and yes.”

Steve takes the correct meaning from that information and presses an almost but not quite chaste kiss to Danny’s lips before stepping back, whistling under his breath (something Danny hadn’t realized was possible), and nodding. “God you look good. Glad I changed too.”

And, hi, takes one to know one, Danny thinks, because Steve doesn’t so much look _good_ as _sinful._ And maybe it’s that, or the resultant stirring of his cock, that makes him decide tonight is the night to take him to the brothers’ bar. 

“Hungry?” Steve asks once they’ve eye-fucked a bit longer, and yeah, obviously he is—oh you mean food. Right.

“I could eat,” Danny replies, and the flashing of Steve’s eyes tells him his meaning isn’t lost.

“I got through the day by thinking about those leftovers,” Steve replies, eyes and tone shifting to a light teasing one which doesn’t actually do anything to mute the sexual tension swirling in the air, but he heads to the fridge under the counter of the bar, and Danny, of course, follows. 

They plate up ample servings of the chilled mezze, Steve grabs a bottle of the same minted water from the glass-front cooler, and they settle at a table discretely toward the back of the patio—sunset still in view, but blocking nothing of the guests’ lines of sight from their spot in the pool.

“So, what’d you get up to today,” Danny asks, around a mouthful of spicy feta spread atop a leaf of endive. “Or is it top secret?” He’s joking, of course, referencing Steve’s supposed inability to give anything more than vague details about half his sailing adventures. 

Steve looks momentarily guarded before something shifts and he waves it off. “You’ll know soon enough,” he says, then turns the focus to the food, which frankly isn’t hard to do. They make short work of the _souvlaki_ and _keftedes_ , dipping both in the sweet and tart and tangy lemon-dill dipping sauce Steve seems particularly addicted to. “We’ll have to stock up on these,” he says, as he swipes the last of the yogurt sauce from the bowl with his finger. 

“No wonder Marina’s fond of you,” Danny murmurs, leaning back in his chair and sipping from a fresh bottle of fruit flavored soda water. 

Steve grins. “Do you think she is? I hope so.”

And if Danny thinks it’s slightly odd he’d be so concerned what she thinks of him, he doesn’t dwell on it for long, because Steve suddenly remembers the desserts, and it takes all Danny’s strength of will to distract him from the notion—because he knows, if they go back to his room for the by-now truly honey soaked treats, they’ll end up naked in bed within three minutes. 

Which is definitely on the menu for later, but Danny has other plans to see to first.

Plans involving a visit to a certain local bar.

And introducing Steve to the man behind it. 

*

It ends up being easy for them to slip out, as the pool grows crowded for cocktails and an after sunset swim, and Steve doesn’t question him as they exit the hotel and head up the hill, and when Danny slips his arm in Steve’s, he tugs him closer and sighs contentedly.

“This is nice,” Steve says, tone more than a little awed. 

And the thing is, it really is. Sometimes Danny loses sight of how beautiful the island is, being so accustomed to it now—the elements that make up its striking beauty muted by long-time exposure but nonetheless appreciated, if somewhat less hit-you-over-the-head than it’d been at first. 

Of course, it helps that things are tightly manicured at this point in the season. The bougainvillea, which sometimes grows scraggly and sparse in the cooler months, is trimmed and full and glorious. The walls are almost all freshly white, and the colored trim, used sparingly and to great effect, pops even more than usual, in the soft warm light of evening. Twinkly lights have become popular recently, possibly because more of the younger locals are remaining at home now, rather than fleeing the island as they used to, and someone’s taken to pumping mellow music somehow magically through the narrow streets of this part of town. 

The energy surges as they near the bar. It’s still early enough it won’t be crowded, but late enough not to be empty. 

Steve’s smile widens as they approach the open door, and Danny realizes Steve may have heard of the place, from Marina. (If he has, it occurs to Danny, it was probably in the form of a warning about Alekos’s wily ways.)

They step through the door, Danny relishing the change in sensory input as it hits him, from bright fresh salty air to the richer interior sights and scents. The smell of wood from the floors, the walls, even the ceiling. The sharp pine of the bar’s polish, mixed with the herbal spice of the booze flowing freely in glasses passed across it. The heady musk of Alekos’s cologne, the underlying tang of sweat and lust—also from him but from most the other customers as well. None of which is to imply it’s some sort of Grecian pleasure den, but it is a very earthy place. A minor Dionysian temple of sorts. Alekos himself could readily play the part. 

Steve’s posture shifts instantly. Danny feels it even though they’ve stepped apart to walk inside. Perhaps Steve recognizes some familiar elemental aspect, or something activates a sense-memory from his time in the Navy, or maybe it’s something older, something nearly mythic. Alekos, who is behind the bar, pouring drinks for a woman who is doing her best to offer him her breasts in exchange, lifts his head as Steve nears with Danny. It’s electric. As if they’ve scented each other out, even without words accompanying. 

His eyes dart briefly over to Danny, but then back to Steve, and his expression goes feral. Danny almost thinks Steve growls. 

They take stools at the bar, waiting patiently till the woman notices she’s lost Alekos to the two men beside her, but as she sizes them up she shrugs, then grinning, takes the full glasses and walks back to the table where her friends await fresh drinks. If Danny thinks they’ve got an audience after, he does his best to ignore it—something admittedly not difficult to do, as the energy arcing between the two dark haired men on either side of the bar is _palpable._

Alekos turns to face the wall of liquor behind him, and Danny notices, in the shift of his shoulders, an unaccustomed tension in his body. 

He’s stalling. 

It’s almost like Steve notices too, and it gives him a momentary upper hand. His posture eases on the stool, though Danny imagines he wishes he weren’t so far apart from Danny, held by the placement of the barstools—as though he would have a more favorable position if he could be physically closer to Danny, more clearly holding his territory. It takes effort, but Danny manages to not roll his eyes at the thought. He knows such behavior well, and it doesn’t bother him, but it does amuse him, as long as it doesn’t go too far. 

With an exhalation of decision, Alekos grabs two bottles off the shelf in a flash of red and green, and turns back to face his—well, it’s _not_ his competition, that’s the thing. 

He’s sure acting like it, though. 

He scoops the cocktail shaker full of ice, adds a generous pour of mellow green herbal Chartreuse, an equal measure of ouzo from the bottle perpetually on the counter, lids it, and shakes. Three shot glasses appear on the bar in front of Steve and Danny in a single, elegant move—unthinking, swift, undeniably sexy. He’s showing off, but not meaning to. He’s simply gone into habituated performance mode. The glasses fill in one of those dramatic pours from so high above it seems impossible the drinks shouldn’t spill, but they don’t. Danny knows the next part, but he doesn’t lean away from it. The red-labeled bottle with the amber colored contents should ring warning bells inside Danny’s head, but he enjoys the showmanship of a good pour, so he watches in fascination as Alekos carefully tops each glass, off the back of a spoon, the 151-proof rum floating almost viscously apart from the grassy green liquid beneath, twisting the top back on and moving the bottle away, before producing his lighter seemingly from thin air and igniting all three shots in one pass of his hand, like a wizard conjuring fire from the ether. 

If he’s intending to throw Steve out of his comfort zone with the flaming concoction, he hasn’t succeeded. There is an energy shift though, as Danny watches their eyes meet across the fire between them. He almost thinks it’s akin to _recognition._

Steve picks up the glass closest to him, holds it as easily, as naturally, as most people would a glass of wine—as opposed to something that’s literally on fire. Alekos grabs his, then Danny lifts the final shot, and they raise their glasses towards each other, Danny watching as dark eyes flash with figurative fire, almost more than the real stuff held between their fingertips. Steve doesn’t falter as Alekos damn near bellows a string of almost threatening sounding Greek salutations, ending in a gruff “ _Yia mas!”_ with Steve echoing him. Danny again refrains from rolling his eyes as he carefully extinguishes his shot with a press of the spoon into the less flammable liquid beneath the flame, before downing it, and letting the glass cool in his hand before setting it down. His companions are slightly less safety conscious—and really it’d be better all around if they’d just get the damn measuring tape out—but neither is dumb enough to risk setting themselves on fire, so they handle the process with care, as well as considerable finesse, blowing their shots out in nearly the same moment as they drink them, the practiced manner proving they’re not unaccustomed to dealing with fire. Which, okay, is undeniably sexy, if a little bit stupid. 

They do, however, follow it up by slamming their still-hot glasses on the counter, which strikes Danny as needlessly risky, but somehow that’s done it—some sort of trial by fire Danny feels he’s missed ninety percent of the meaning behind. It’s clearly meant something essential to both of them, and Alekos’s face lights up, in a near perfect mirror of Steve’s Cheshire-like grin, as in one instant he changes from challenger to comrade, and he pulls three bottles of the local beer up from the fridge beneath the bar, twisting the caps off in an effortless move, and shifts completely into his typical easygoing persona, taking a swig of beer to clear any residual burn from the shot before setting his aside and acting once more like a gracious host. 

The really stunning thing is how Steve’s own energy has morphed into something Danny can’t define. And okay, it’s not as though he’s known the guy for very long, but he does recognize that there is some shared something between the two taller men that he doesn’t understand, and he thinks maybe he ought to bristle at the notion, but instead he finds it fascinating. And more than a little endearing. 

Not that he’d admit that to either of them. 

He isn’t sure what he’d hoped for, when he’d known he wanted to introduce these two beautiful men to each other. But now that he sees it, he thinks possibly it’s this. 

Alekos keeps the bar between them, rather than joining them on the other side as he frequently does, and that tells Danny more than probably his best friend and former lover is aware. But he’s easy behind it, as he and Steve chatter away in some slightly obscure tone, and it takes Danny longer than it ought, to realize they’re literally speaking Greek. 

He listens in enough to determine they’re talking about boats and sailing, and Danny has to nearly smack himself, because of course, they’ve both served their countries—all Greek men are required to, for at least a year, so there’s nothing surprising in that, but Alekos still serves in the Naval Guard that operates in the remote islands, when the need arises. How their trial by fire has uncovered a common language of the sea Danny’s sure he doesn’t want to know, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it had in fact been some sort of booze-based equivalent of a secret handshake, and doesn’t that just figure. 

Danny tunes out the sailor talk, focusing instead on the things words don’t convey but are even more clear to him than if they had bothered to spell them out. They may have each passed an initial _Okay I’m not going to bite_ test, but there are layers remaining, and they patiently unravel them one by one, Alekos checking that Steve is worthy, lobbing challenge after challenge, each of which Steve meets squarely before lobbing back one of his own, grinning in genuine pleasure when his volley is returned with ease, grace, and real enjoyment. 

It’s fucking beautiful... as well as undeniably hot. 

Danny is confident he’s reading the underlying meaning correctly, but it’s not till Tryfon emerges from the office, lingering in the background, observing, and Danny sees the realization dawn on the older man’s face, that Danny realizes just how significant the interaction happening before him is. Alekos takes his role seriously—Danny’s seen him interfere in social interactions he’s gauged unwise, enough times to know Alekos thinks of himself as a Protector in a highly mythic sense. Danny’s just never known it to be wielded in _his_ defense before. Tryfon nods at Danny, winks, then starts his rounds, checking on the bar’s other, slightly neglected, patrons.

“We are being rude,” Alekos says, into a lull in the conversation, and it takes Danny a full beat to realize they’re both looking at him, various shades of warmly, and he clues in that he’s not been participating in their conversation, even though he had sort of been following it.

He clears his throat, and shrugs. “I don’t mind,” Danny admits— _not_ admitting he’s enjoyed simply watching them get along.

“Daniel is not overly fond of boats,” Alekos says, in a mock aside to Steve, who notices Danny’s slight tremor at the use of his full name. 

Steve’s grin flashes brightly before Danny sees him restrain himself. Just. “Oh, he didn’t seem to mind very much yesterday when I took him out on my little dinghy.”

Whatever reaction Danny might have expected Alekos to have to that revelation, it’s not the fond, almost soft look he sends Danny’s way before turning his most predatory gaze back on Steve. “That is high praise for your sailing,” he says with his words, while his eyes clearly lay out the seventeen forms of torture he will delightedly subject Steve to should he ever abuse that trust. 

“Duly noted,” Steve responds, fully aware of what he’s acknowledging. 

The bar starts to fill after that, islanders seeking relaxation and fun before the season hits and they mostly stay away from the bar, which can get a little overrun with that wilder holiday set. Danny prefers the drunkenness of the locals, which somehow seems more authentic. There’s often a sense of desperation not very well hidden beneath the spring-break-like vibe that sometimes dominates the crowded touristy times, and it makes Danny uncomfortable, makes him feel he needs to stay sober himself, to be—like Alekos—the protective one. But tonight, it’s almost all locals, and it turns to dancing on the bar far more readily and with considerably less booze than non-locals require to lower their inhibitions for such revelry. 

He counts himself mostly as “too old” for such behavior, though Marina would smack him on the ass for such insolence—a point she proves unequivocally when she’s the one to get the dancing started. The music is Greek—not ancient but rustic and earthy nonetheless, like her cooking. And Danny knows without a doubt that Alekos has selected it specifically to goad her into dancing with him. The look on his face when she holds her hand out to him, to help her up on the sturdy bar (which was clearly made to take the tradition) is one of absolute victory.

Danny laughs, full-throated and delighted, while Steve watches the proceedings in slightly-removed enjoyment, keenly aware he’s getting an insider view of something non-islanders typically wouldn’t get to see. When he catches Danny watching him he grins, nods towards the bar as if to ask _do you do that?_ Danny presses his lips together to hide his smile, gives a gesture that’s nearly Greek, something between a denial and a shrug, and returns the query. Steve’s answering smirk hints that he’s not unfamiliar with the practice, but his posture shows he knows tonight is for the locals, so they settle towards the quieter back of the bar, drinks in hand, and enjoy the transcendent joy that radiates off Alekos as Marina lets him dance with her atop his treasured bar. Sweet dreams will no doubt be had tonight. 

They make their excuses, during a lull in the dancing, and step out into the evening air, relishing the slight chill that's refreshing after the literal and metaphorical heat they’ve been basking in for the past few hours. Danny shivers from sheer contrast, and Steve wraps an arm around him, slowing their pace to a sedate amble. 

The moon is high in the sky, more than making up for any lights that have been shut off due to the late hour, and time feels held almost still. 

“Did I pass?” Steve asks, skipping nimbly over even bothering to ask if the meeting—if the evening—had in fact been a test. 

Danny huffs out an amused puff of air. “You know you did.” And he tugs Steve against his body, their collision making them stumble slightly, a pause which Steve makes the most of, pulling Danny in for a deep but not lingering kiss. 

“I’m glad.”

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely. He’s a fantastic guy, and I can tell you’re important to each other.”

“Huh,” Danny replies, pleased, if not really surprised. “He is.... But he doesn’t always go down easily.”

Steve chuckles. “Oh I think probably he does.”

“Hey now, that’s my best friend you’re talking about.”

“Mmmm,” Steve acknowledges, grin not the least contrite. 

They enter the hotel through the back, slipping quietly into the staff quarters. There’s a well-worn US Navy duffel sitting outside Danny’s door, and the sight of it, of belongings that go with the sailor at his side being placed so willingly on his doorstep, does weird and swirly things to Danny’s insides. 

As soon as they’re inside, Danny finds himself being pressed up against the smooth, cool plaster wall, and all thoughts of the significance of the moment are abandoned to the pure _yes_ of bliss that washes over him. 

They stumble into Danny’s shower, discarding clothes along the way. It’s all kisses and hands, desperate somehow in way they haven’t been before, and maybe—some tiny part of Danny’s brain that’s not muted out by want suggests—maybe it’s to do with having been so much around other people today. They stood close at the bar, leaning into but not wrapped around each other. Mindful of the setting, the observant eyes, the fact of Steve’s status as off-islander. But also because it’s still so new—this, whatever it is, between them. It doesn’t feel new, that’s the improbable thing, and Danny has to keep reminding himself that it is. Which is hard. 

But it feels like that release, when you’ve been held back, held in, and suddenly you’re set free—like the stereotypical school release, doors open, sprinting for the playground, or the ice cream truck. 

Danny feels like a teenager, which makes how fast they both come a little easier to take, but it’s not like either of them has any desire to hold back. 

They sit, after, out in the tiny courtyard, towels around their waists, honey-drenched bites of _baklava_ and _kataifi_ dripping from their fingers, feeding each other, licking trails of sticky sweet from their own wrists and each other’s. 

Then it’s back in the shower to rinse, and they land, solidly, not sated but embers only burning hotter, in bed, where Steve presses Danny into the mattress which is firmer and less forgiving than the one upstairs, but he doesn’t care, doesn’t mind in the least because it’s not long at all before Steve’s pressing into Danny, and already he’s worked out how to use the smaller, cozier, closer arch of the alcove not very far above their heads to his advantage, and holy fuck there’s athletic sex and then there’s this, which is damn near mind-exploding. Steve has to clamp a hand over Danny’s mouth to mute his yell as the intensity gets the better of him as he comes, Steve pumping his own spend into him in the next breath.

It’s not till then that either of them realizes they’ve not used protection, and Steve’s the first to admit there’s no chance he’s not safe. 

“It’s been well over a year since I’ve been with anyone other than my own hand,” he says, not looking or sounding embarrassed, which gives Danny the courage to confess his own recent deficit of action, and Steve, amazingly, looks thrilled by that. Gone, Danny supposes, are the days when a lack of activity meant a lack of virility. Maybe being selective isn’t a drawback anymore. Wouldn’t that be a welcome advance of civility. Not to imply there’s anything wrong with a good old fashioned smörgåsbord. But even Alekos has pointed out it’s not for everyone. 

“Still, that was dumb of me,” Steve mutters. “I just.... I can’t seem to control myself around you. I’m not... I’ve never been....”

“Yeah, me too,” whispers Danny, and pulls him in for a searing kiss. 

They shower for a third time, and Danny makes a mental note to buy more towels, then they settle into bed with bottles of that lovely minted soda water Danny loves so much, because hydration is always important, but it’s absolutely vital with Steve in his life. So much water... Danny’s never been so drenched, inside and out, and yes he hears how that sounds, get your mind out of the gutter. 

“What’s Alekos’s connection to Marina?” Steve asks, idly playing with Danny’s hand on his chest. 

Danny grins. “Oh he’s utterly in love with her,” he says, fondly. 

Steve _hmmms._ “Can’t really blame him for that, she’s amazing. I’m a little smitten myself—though also kind of terrified.”

“Oh, so is he.”

Steve chuckles. 

“Why do you ask?” 

“Just wondering. It’s a small island, I know everyone’s connected in some way.”

“Mmmm. True,” he mumbles sleepily, and even if Danny was awake enough to push, to get at where Steve’s mind was going with the query, he doesn’t get the chance, because even Steve has limits, and it’s only moments before they’re both drifting off to utterly blissful sleep. 

***

Waking up with someone in his room... in his bed.... Well that’s a whole new fascinating thing, isn’t it. 

Because the thing is, he and Alekos may have “broken in” all the rooms of the hotel, and certainly made good use of the fact the brothers live above their bar. And Danny has admitted to numerous seasonal flings, but those he had very carefully kept “away from home,” as it were. The truth is, this is a first. Having someone in his rooms—and, well, _having someone_ in his rooms—simply isn’t something he’d been comfortable with. 

So why’s it comfortable now? Why does it feel not just acceptable, but somehow _right_?

He’s not really comfortable with the answer his heart supplies. Which is a lot closer to “Because it _is_ ” than his mind feels entirely at ease with. He’s sharply aware this can only be temporary. Which only highlights the fact that his earlier notion he was approaching being ready once again for a long term (he’s not ready to say “forever” yet, may _never_ be truly ready for that) relationship is now absolutely certain. He wants that, wants _this._ Waking up to a sleep tousled, drowsy, adorably endearing man in his bed, nuzzling mindlessly against him, morning wood growing insistent against his leg. 

Danny’s always fallen easily. Always been prone to be the one to say it first, say it too soon. Even he has never been ready to even think it _this_ quickly. But he’s already been holding himself back from the thought for longer than he’s willing to admit. And it’s only been three nights he’s known the guy, and one of those was spent with his own imagination. 

Most of his thoughts, his anxieties, his worries, are slowly swept aside as Steve nuzzles his way down and over Danny’s body till he’s settled between his thighs, slurping greedily at his leaking dick like it’s some kind of font of magical elixir that will provide Steve all the answers he seeks. If Danny wishes it were that easy for _him,_ well, you can’t exactly blame him for that. As it is, Steve’s dick really is remarkably magical as well, and it _does_ help, especially when Steve, in his turn, comes in full, hot bursts that feel almost sustaining to Danny, crying out softly as though it almost pains him. And Danny loves that, loves that he can tell Steve’s already adjusting to feeling valued, adored, appreciated, that he's allowing, already, for Danny’s care, his attention, to mean that Steve deserves it. He senses—as Steve clings to him a little in his aftershocks, hands clenching in Danny’s hair before he realizes how desperate it might seem and struggles to relax—that while he may be dealing with some anxieties of his own, it only makes him more keenly aware that Steve is too.

“Coffee?” Steve suggests, as though it were part of morning sex, rather than an end to it.

“Uugh,” Danny grunts. “I don’t actually have a coffee maker in my rooms.”

Steve grins, propping himself up on an elbow, running his other hand possessively across Danny’s chest. “I know. I brought mine.”

“Oh my god, marry me.” And we’ve established Danny’s proclivity for morning caffeine, his propensity to behave overly emotionally towards those who provide him with it, but this is a step too far, even from his obsessive need for the drug.

Fortunately Steve seems to find it positively endearing, and he lightheartedly replies “Okay,” kisses him briefly but wetly, and launches himself out of bed, not bothering with clothes, of all the wonderful things, and heads, presumably, to make coffee. 

Danny goes to pee, but then follows to the kitchen area, where he finds Steve’s got the door open to the patio, kettle humming on the stove, and a sturdy looking French press sitting, filled with those delectable smelling Kona grounds, on the counter next to two mugs. 

“I could get used to this,” Danny mutters, as he wraps himself around Steve from behind, settling into place, finding he damn well clicks perfectly in, fits absolutely perfectly against him as though they were actually made for each other. 

Steve _hmmms_ into Danny’s embrace, whispers something Danny thinks is “ _Good_ ,” and they stand there like that until the kettle boils.

Still naked, they head outside to the small, secluded courtyard, where they sit, drinking deeply from the best coffee Danny’s ever had—Steve says it’s because he made it with _aloha,_ whatever the heck that’s supposed to mean—and how is it that twice now with this miraculous man, Danny’s had dreams and daydreams literally come true the very next day? First with that goddamn coffeecake, and now with this, the perfection of his tiny not-garden for naked post-sex morning coffee. 

“This is really nice,” Steve mutters, as he sets his empty mug aside in favor of littering kisses along Danny’s collarbone. 

“Mmmmm,” Danny agrees. Though he’s stupidly unable to not add a depreciating comment: “It’s no spectacular view.”

Steve looks up from his activity, eyes sparking darkly. “From where I sit, it’s the best view I’ve had all week.” 

And the thing is, he really sounds like he means it, and Danny’s got a little bit of that propensity to use sex to block out emotion, so if he spares a moment to think he ought to find a spot out here to keep a bottle of lube, well... those walls are smooth and warm, and it’s possible he’s imagined being fucked against one of them before. But Steve recognizes something in Danny’s flinch, in the tension that floods him, in the strangled sounds he makes as he struggles to find the right reply to such utter nonsense.

“I get views of the sea all day when I sail,” Steve says softly but firmly. “And yes, I enjoyed the view we had yesterday morning. And the view from your pool is magical, and I can see why you enjoy having that. But this is the only view I need. The sky over my head, and someone to share it with.”

And if it sounds like the second marriage proposal of the day, Danny’s not altogether sure it doesn’t mean even more. 

Steve pulls them both to standing. “Can I get some groceries? I’d like to make you dinner here tonight. Would that be okay?”

Danny, unable to process any of this, simply nods, trying his best to not let tears form. Steve sees them anyway. 

“Good. Now, unfortunately I really do have somewhere I need to be, but I’ll be back before sunset,” and he kisses Danny as deeply as he’d consumed his coffee, and it feels just as fueling, just as awakening, as the coffee had. 

Danny stays out in the courtyard as Steve heads inside to dress, returning for one more kiss before he heads out, leaving Danny feeling fuller than he knows how to feel, and utterly bereft at the same time.

*

By the time he gets to the front desk, Thalia is up to her arms in bookings, and she shoves a stack at him, of the more complex arrangements that need to be made. The special requests, the slightly unusual arrangements, and some highly irregular inquiries she’s not comfortable addressing herself, but knows Danny will make the decisions on. He’s established himself in his five short years as a hotelier as someone willing and able to go the extra mile, and it’s garnered him an intriguing mix of clientele. Some, like the minor starlet, who simply need discretion and extra pampering. And others who have more... _elaborate_ needs. 

“If you really want a home-like-atmosphere, maybe stay at a B and B,” Danny mutters as he notes, not for the first time, that he’s absolutely not getting a cat, quote: _in white, to match the room._

There are several he’s happy to address. One about very specific food needs, which Marina will easily accommodate. One asking for music lessons, which isn’t a first, and Danny has just the local musician to call on. Two who want catered hikes, three who want a cooking class, one large party that wants an entire island experience curated for them from dawn to dusk, and one individual who has some really explicit interests in learning donkey handling from whomever on the island Danny thinks has the most well-behaved donkeys. Oddly, it’s a question Danny has an answer for, so he calls the farm and, sure enough, Elena is more than happy to share her techniques for donkey handling and no that’s not a euphemism, they’re really sweet, docile creatures and their popularity is entirely justified. 

He’s left, by the end of the morning, with the stack he lacks a ready solution for, the increasingly insistent requests for sailing expeditions. Not yachting, not the sharp cold modern boats, but the warm wooden classically Greek sailboats. Some want extended trips, bookended by stays at Danny’s hotel, and the extra money these people are willing to pay out for the experience stuns Danny. But plenty simply want a sunset-and-cocktails cruise. Or a breakfast-and-snorkeling outing. Or lunch and nap on a sunny deck whilst docked in a secluded cove. Danny knows, from the inter-island hotel message board, that he’s not the only one getting such requests. Some places have banned together to purchase small boats to ease the demand. But Danny’s not one to do something imperfectly. His clients don’t want some shabby fishing boat that’s been outfitted with sails that look pretty but don’t function and custom cushions that cost more than the mattresses on his beds. They want an authentic Greek sailing experience (and no, that’s not a euphemism either). 

Patting the stack mindlessly, Danny thinks again about the stately ship they’d seen sailing by the island yesterday. Something uneasy stirs in his gut, because he’s keenly aware there’s the potential for him to lose out, if it turns out someone has gone ahead and procured a ship for their exclusive use. He thinks, not for the first time, about asking Marina for suggestions. Her father had been a well known boat builder back in the day—fading along with the popularity of his craft, long before the current resurgence of interest. He hasn’t wanted to bring it up, because he knows, the losing out of the wooden boat to modern fiberglass ones had been part of the failure and heartbreak that had led to Manos’s death. And though he’d have been thrilled with the current resurgence of wooden boats, Danny’s simply not sure how she’d take it. And he hasn’t wanted to ask. 

He’s contemplating taking her an offering, some fresh flowers maybe, when the starlet and her party bustle onto the scene and steal Danny’s full attention. 

It’s well after lunch, and they’re all out at the pool—basking, splashing, imbibing, napping—when the tall masted ship sails into the harbor, but this time, instead of sailing stately by, it rounds the cove, and settles into port. 

Danny checks on it, throughout the rest of the afternoon, as he refills the cooler, goes to get ice, folds several stacks of pool towels Thalia’s run through the wash, and listens to gossip about the sizes of celebrity dicks and speculation about various stars’ sexual identity, in greater and more elaborate detail than he’s been subjected to since the last time this little group had graced his premises. He neglects to point out that the dick size hierarchy seems to have changed substantially (which strikes him as highly dubious), though sexual identity seems remarkably consistent, which is mildly comforting. 

The ship doesn’t move. As sunset approaches, the pre-greased gathering heads for a special cookout down near the water, and they swayingly promise Danny they’ll see what dirt they can get on the provenance of the sizable vessel. Innuendo and the incessant need for information trading having depleted him, Danny grabs one of the flavored waters (cucumber and lemon, which isn’t his favorite, but Alekos seems to imagine the California types prefer it) and he stubbornly resists the urge to dive into the pool, clothes on, to cleanse himself from the exhausting fascination with other people’s lives. 

He’s a little more than usually preoccupied with his own life, thank you, so if he gets lost in thought for a bit—eyes shut, arm thrown over his head—as he leans back in the plush lounger furthest against the wall (so as not to block anyone who might venture up to watch the sunset), well. It’s a pleasing respite. As is the _quiet._

In which case he perhaps ought to hear the footfalls on the steps, perhaps should be alerted by the cracking open of a bottle from the cooler. But it’s not till he hears the wooden creaking of the chaise next to his that he realizes he’s no longer alone.

“I was just thinking about you,” he confesses easily.

“Good thoughts, I hope?”

“Depends. What’s for dinner?”

And Steve’s laugh washes any irritation from his day clean out of his system, leaving him more refreshed by the sound than he would have been by a dip in the pool.

“You’ll just have to wait,” Steve replies, tapping a small cooler at his feet. “First, we’re going to watch the sunset, and then we’re going to make out. Then I’ll cook.”

Danny tries not to smile, but he utterly fails. 

And then, of course, they absolutely fail to watch the sunset. Because making out, it turns out, is way more fun. 

“Can I help?” Danny asks, once they're in his rooms and he's watching Steve, perfectly at home, unloading the cooler. He's an exercise in efficiency, and it’s not till then that it occurs to Danny that Steve’s cooking skills were no doubt obtained in the Navy. 

He turns to Danny with a wave that borders on dismissive, then thinks the better of it. “Here, open this,” he says pressing a cold bottle into his hands. 

It’s a local Assyrtiko, a wine Danny knows well, and he opens the slightly sweet white, pouring generous portions into the stemless glasses that sit ever at the ready on his draining board. They kiss, instead of toasting, and that’s another habit Danny could easily get used to. 

“How are you at vegetables?” Steve asks, setting his wine aside and picking two tomatoes and a red onion out of his cooler.

Danny does his best _I’m offended you even have to ask_ look. “Marina finds me helpful...” he says, and while Steve can’t truly know her exacting standards, he can probably imagine, and he does in fact look suitably impressed. 

“Not too thick, not too thin—slices of each.” He pulls out a roll of foil and a package of feta, then scrounges around in the cooler till he comes up with a sprig of fresh oregano. “To your taste,” he says, handing it over with a playful smile and a flourish, and Danny shakes his head in amusement as he adds the herbs to his cutting board after rinsing them in the sink. 

“Bread?” He asks, on an afterthought, and Steve pulls a small rustic village loaf from the same canvas tote the foil came from. 

Satisfied, Danny sets to work, cutting, arranging, wrapping, till he has the cheese warming in the small oven, bread sliced and in a tea towel, nestled in a basket. If he had a slightly larger table they could eat outside, but with the door open, it’s almost as nice inside. His mind divides itself between imagining twinkly lights hanging in his tiny courtyard, music filtering through to outside from the living room, and watching as Steve prepares the main course, some lovely fillets of red snapper he says his neighbor in the port had caught that morning. 

Danny almost asks if Steve noticed the tall ship that’s joined the other smaller ships in the harbor, but he’s keenly aware of not wanting to talk shop at the table. He doesn’t love when his profession is the dinner conversation, so he strives to hold to that for his companions, whenever he can. Still, the subject burns a hole in his metaphorical pocket, until Steve sets the plate of perfectly golden fish on the table next to the steaming foil packet of cheese and tomatoes. It’s the kind of meal Danny loves to make, himself. Simple, undeniably fresh, and somehow life affirming. One of those meals that just feels what food ought to be. Not simply fuel, but a little celebration. Bright, citrusy fish, that slight bite of the onion, the earthiness of the herb, creamy satisfaction of spreading feta on the hearty bread. It gratifies all the senses, holds enough of your attention so you’re mindful of your eating, but is unfussy enough not to detract from conversation, which turns from childhood stories of fishing, to failed attempts at gardening, to tales of vineyard adventures, and the misspent summer Danny’d briefly imagined he might fancy himself a winemaker. 

“It was, I admit, mostly because she was beautiful,” he says, knowing he’s blushing, as he always fails not to when he admits the summer between sophomore and junior years, when he’d ended up at a vineyard in the Hudson Valley, learning how to care for the vines and pining for the French winemaker who’d been brought over by the owner, to help him establish his process, develop his flavor, finesse his methods—something she had ultimately helped Danny to do in a less horticultural and more... well, _sexual_ way. 

Steve grins appreciatively over a bite of bread. “What a fabulous experience to have had.” 

Danny might blush, but he won’t deny it. “Yeah, it was.”

“It’s important to have adventures,” Steve says, as he finishes his glass of wine, tops his and Danny’s up, and if it feels like an attempt to segue into a new conversation, it only intrigues Danny. 

“I would agree...” he says slowly, hoping to draw out of him whatever topic Steve’s considering launching into. 

“But it’s also nice,” Steve says into the opening, “to realize that sometimes the best adventure is staying still.” 

Ah.

_Ohhh._

Danny's mind stutters momentarily, then catches up. “Absolutely,” he agrees, his cheeks well past _blushing_ and headed towards _glowing,_ and the rest of the evening passes in one of those lovely, light, timeless moods that feel like a gift almost from another time and place, only very much _here, now._ By the time they start to get ready for bed, they're still vibrantly awake, which is a heady, powerful feeling. 

He'd of course set out some things for Steve in the bathroom earlier. A glass for his toothbrush, a small tray for the things from his pockets. Little hospitality touches he’d done without really thinking. But the way Steve reacts, as he unpacks even that little bit, warms Danny’s heart and hurts it at the same time. 

Staying still might be the biggest adventure of all for someone like Steve, so if he looks a little bit uncertain and lost—as Danny imagines _he_ must seem when he’s standing on the deck of a boat—well it only makes sense. 

They shower together, but it’s not sexual so much as caring. Touches soften into caresses, soapy slides against already familiar skin, that feeling of home in the presence of another. 

Teeth brushing always strikes Danny as almost painfully intimate. (And not just because he’s mindful of attempting to mint away all traces of onion and fish such that kissing is less about reliving dinner and more about, well, kissing.) It’s not an activity that’s the least romantic— _rinse and spit—_ but somehow that makes it even more so. 

They dress for bed, which is almost embarrassingly awkward, selecting clothes to _wear,_ rather than the more accustomed removing of clothes. He starts to overthink it, thinking he should have nicer sleeping clothes than he does, but scolds himself for the absurdity and pulls on his usual faded Seton Hall tee and charcoal boxer briefs, and finds himself relieved when Steve pulls out a similarly worn Naval Academy shirt, but simply tosses it on his pillow, electing to stay with just the blue and green plaid boxers he’s selected. 

“Go Pirates,” Steve whispers, as he wraps Danny in his arms, lowering them both onto the bed and into a soft swirl of kisses and touches that end almost sweetly in lazy and drawn out hand jobs, and more kisses, and falling asleep tangled together as though they’ve been doing this for years, and not mere days.

***

The morning brings Danny’s new favorite thing in all the world—a half naked man bringing him freshly brewed coffee in bed. 

If Steve has guessed this, plans to use it to his advantage, he doesn’t show it, but it works to his favor nonetheless. 

“Can you take some time off this morning? There’s something I want to show you.”

He probably shouldn’t. The Hollywood group has left the day open, which either means getting drunk at the pool, or requesting some oddly elaborate adventure out of nowhere, leaving Danny scrambling to assemble something suitably fantastic from thin air. 

But Steve looks both eager and nervous, and he’s also noticed Danny’s morning situation, and has started licking his lips like he’s preparing in case Danny needs more _persuading._

Danny sighs, takes another sip of his coffee, and agrees. “Sure, just let me take care of a couple of things at the desk before we go.”

Steve’s smile is slightly crooked as he indicates they probably should take care of first things first.

Needless to say, that's another thing Danny could very much get used to. 

After they dress and then undress and then dress again, they eventually make it out the door, and Danny leaves a list of contacts just in case, at the desk for Thalia along with a note to please call if she needs.

Even given their delayed start, it’s still early by the time they’ve started down the hill towards the sea. Danny insists on stopping at the market, which, as it serves the local fishermen—those notorious early risers—is already open and bustling, the morning selection of _bougatsa_ half-depleted. They get one each of the meat and cheese varieties, and Danny sighs in satisfaction as he munches on the slightly sweet, flaky pastry, the still-warm cheese filling satisfying his morning need for sugar and also giving him the protein he thinks he might need for whatever Steve’s got up his sleeve. Not much for sugar in the morning, Steve opts for the meat-filled variety, offering Danny a bite, and accepting a taste of Danny’s in return. 

It’s something Danny hadn’t realized he’s missed—that simple sharing of food. _I want pancakes, but a bite or two of omelette would be nice...._ He’d grown up with it, had it in all his relationships since high school. Hasn’t had it since the divorce. Alekos, like Marina, would simply insist he have his own of whatever he might like, even if it meant three separate dishes. But that’s different. And maybe it’s not something everyone gets, but Steve willingly offering Danny a bite of his breakfast does more to his heart than their inability to make it out the door on their first try. 

“So where are we headed?” Danny asks, once he’s finished his breakfast pastry and woken a little more to his surroundings. That tall-masted ship is in the harbor below them, and he feels drawn towards it almost magnetically. 

Steve’s noticed. 

His expression, as he studies Danny, is hopeful, but guarded, and as they near the ship, Danny’s so much in awe—of the sheer scale, of the warmth of the wood, the gentle beauty of her, he takes too long to click in.

“Well?” Steve asks, as they stand next to the bow, the scent of pine nearly overpowering in the still morning air. She’s been freshly treated. Recently restored. Because there’s no doubt, even with Danny’s limited knowledge and experience, she’s no new creation. The shiny brass fixtures alone, that hold the ropes that moor her to the dock, speak of an attention to detail not often seen anymore. 

She’s captivating, and Danny says so. 

Steve’s delighted grin is interrupted by the appearance of a tall, grey haired, bearded man on deck, the most sailor-looking sailor Danny’s seen possibly ever. He waves, and lowers the steps.

“Welcome aboard,” he calls down to them. “You must be Danny.”

Danny’s face must give away his surprise, because the man laughs. 

“Steve didn’t mention me, did he—oh, he hasn’t mentioned any of this.” Danny’s reached the deck, and the man holds out a tan and weathered hand that tells Danny the work that’s been done on the boat has been done in great part by him. “I’m Joe.”

“Good to meet you, Joe, your ship is magnificent.”

“Mmmm,” he replies, looking about them, at the tall mast, the crisp white sails that are clearly new, and the deck that’s been sanded and swabbed and oiled to glistening perfection. “She’s not entirely mine, but she is a beauty, that’s for sure.”

Danny turns to where Steve is standing, watching carefully. He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head. “Not mine,” he says softly.

“Not _yet_ ,” Joe clarifies. “But that’s a conversation for later. First, a tour?”

“Yes, please,” Danny exclaims, knowing he sounds as giddy as a kid in a candy shop, and is just as surprised by that as Steve is, judging from the laughter that follows them as Joe leads the way along the deck. 

The ship is even more spacious than Danny had imagined, watching her from afar. Wide decks that could accommodate extra seating—if, you know, one wanted to use her for a sunset cruise, or something. She feels solid beneath his feet, warm, welcoming, safe. And it’s not that he didn’t feel those things on Steve’s tiny-by-comparison vessel, but they’re amplified here in a deep and compelling way he can’t begin to explain. 

“It’s the wood,” Joe says, evidently recognizing that Danny’s puzzling something over as he smooths his fingers across the railing. “That feeling you can’t quite place? Old wood, old ship. She’s seen a few rough seas in her day. Always come safely home. Until, that is... well, but now we’ve brought her back where she belongs.” He pats the railing as well. “I think she knows.”

Danny turns, amused, to look at Steve who just shrugs. “Mariners get emotional about their boats,” he says, raising his hands defensively when Joe shoots him a stern look. “I do too, I do too!” 

Danny chuckles, and moves to go below. “Can I?”

“Absolutely,” says Joe. 

He points out attributes that are clearly noteworthy to him, but which mean little to Danny. But the cabins, ohh, those _do_ mean something. This isn’t just a pleasure boat. Sure, she could cruise circles around the island for a lovely sunset photo-op and drinks do. But she can do the extended (read: expensive) sailing adventure as well, and, from just one glance at her berths, do it with luxury. 

Danny steps into one of the larger cabins and whistles.

Joe follows him, beaming. “Too many years on US Navy vessels. If I’m sailing through my retirement, I’m doing it in style.”

“This is high style alright,” Danny replies, glance sweeping past the well-appointed bunk to a spacious and sparkling bathroom even he wouldn’t mind using. 

“Glad you approve,” Joe says, and it sounds like he genuinely means it. When Danny looks askance at him, he adds: “Steve’s told me how beautifully you’ve done your hotel. He was impressed and he’s not usually one to notice things.” A soft sound of protest reaches them from the doorway, where Steve’s still standing. Joe smiles his way, and Danny’s certain its fondness he sees. “I didn’t know much when I picked these, just chose what suited her best.”

“You chose well,” Danny confirms, thinking Joe’s _excuse_ says more about him than he seems to know. Just like Danny’d restored his hotel to its former glory mostly by following what seemed right, Joe has brought a truly remarkable vessel back to life in very much the same way. 

He catches Steve watching them closely and suddenly it occurs to him why Steve hadn't pre-warned him what he was showing him, but instead simply dropped him in it: Danny’s reactions have been completely uncensored, and whatever Steve might have expected, from the gleam in his eye, Danny’s more than met it.

They settle back atop deck, in what clearly will be the bar area. It’s sparsely but functionally outfitted, solid basics if not much refinement, but Danny can see how well it will work. There’s enough room undercover for those who would need a break from the sun during an afternoon cruise, enough room out from the roof for those sun-worshipers who want to spend a morning fishing trip working on their tan, a broad, sturdy table that could accommodate a sizable party for a magnificent feast, and a small but more than adequate kitchen that could easily prepare any fish that’s been caught, or certainly assemble a prepared feast, say, one of Marina’s famous layouts. 

“She’s a classic,” Joe says, fondness full in his tone as he sits at the head of the table, and he looks just as at home there as he must at the helm. “True, she’s suffered a little neglect along the way, but we’ve got her just about good as new. Passed her preliminary safety trials, just needs a few more tests and certifications and she’ll be ready to take on paying passengers.”

He looks across the table at Steve, raises an eyebrow and leans back, like he’s resting his case. 

“Well,” Steve says, turning away from Joe and moving towards Danny on the bench next to him, almost like he’s creating a sub-conversation. Like he wants to be clear that his question, his need, is different from Joe’s. “What do you think?”

Danny smiles readily. He’s pretty sure his judgment is displayed across his face in that smile, but he has no problem also stating it, as Steve clearly wants to hear him say it. “I think she’s just what this island needs.” A slight hesitation as he realizes he might be overstepping in his assumption. “That is, I do hope you plan on sailing her from here.”

“Well, that depends,” Joe muses, warm and amused.

“On?”

“If I get my choice of first mate.” His tone is pointed, his intense look directed at Steve, and the pennies start to drop. 

Steve, the wanderer, Steve the sailor, Steve who has by creation no static home. Picking one harbor, one port, one fixed point. Sailing the same routes, the same expanse of sea, watching the same horizon, again and again... for... how long? Forever?

Danny watches as Steve sees him processing, and he wants to school his face to neutral, but he can’t. It’s too late, he’s too expressive, and Steve already reads him far too easily and well. 

“I’d do it,” Steve whispers into the over-full silence. “I’d happily come back to this port, every time... if I knew you were here, waiting.” 

Joe senses this is a conversation better had without him, and he stands, lays a hand gently, reassuringly on Steve’s shoulder, and Danny knows from that one gesture that whatever losses Steve’s born in his life, Joe knows them—and has shared them. 

“I know that’s a lot to ask,” Steve continues, once Joe’s out of ear shot. “We barely know each other, and I’m not asking for... I just didn’t want to agree to it, to what Joe’s asking... without knowing how... without asking what you think.”

_Without knowing how you feel_ isn’t said aloud, but it’s so clearly left hanging between them, and Danny would ordinarily be inclined to answer with words, but he senses it’s another answer that will mean more, so he leans forward, grabs Steve by the shirt, and, throwing all his years of hurt and fear and longing out the window—or rather, over the side of the ship—he pulls Steve against him, and puts his answer in his kiss. 

“I should be completely honest,” Danny says, once Joe’s rejoined them and they’ve settled a moderate distance apart, though their knees touch beneath the table.

“Oh?” Asks Joe, interest mild, almost as though he doubts Danny’s ability to be harboring any secret that would shock him. 

“I’ve pretty desperately wanted access to a ship for sunset cruises, fishing expeditions, the occasional extended trip around the islands....”

Joe grins at Steve, and though he doesn’t actually say _I told you so,_ he may as well have. “We’re kind of counting on that,” he says to Danny. “On your ability to provide bookings.”

“Oh? But you couldn’t have, you didn’t even know I existed till—”

Suddenly Steve’s expression is one Danny’s not seen before, and it stops him in his tracks. 

Guilt.

“I said he should tell you,” Joe says, tone just that little bit defensive. “But he didn’t want—”

“Shut up, Joe.”

Joe’s hands go up and he goes quiet. 

Danny looks Steve in the eye, and to his credit he doesn’t flinch. “Wanna explain what’s going on?”

“Okay but you have to understand first that I never intended to fall in love with you.”

... Which is possibly the weirdest way Danny’s ever been told. 

“ _Steve_....” Joe’s voice rings with something not unlike disappointment, as though he at least is aware that’s not how you tell someone something like that.

“So, what, you were just planning on seducing me? For bookings?”

Steve sighs, stops himself from face palming. “Can I start at the beginning?”

“ _Yeah, I think that might be a good idea_.” Danny knows his tone has taken on that quality he’s not especially fond of. He has a very clear memory of his mother grounding him for that tone, that _attitude._ But he’s a little caught off guard by all this, and as much as Steve’s stunning confession shouldn’t have his skin tingling given the kiss they’ve just shared, his hackles haven’t _gone up_ so much as completely flown off the rails—and no he doesn’t know what he means by that either. 

“Okay.” Steve settles sideways on the bench, facing Danny, but not moving forward. “It starts more than forty years ago, before I was born, when Joe and my dad were still in the Navy. They were assigned to an operation with the Greek Naval Guard, not far from here. It was supposed to just be a routine training mission, working on anti-piracy tactics.” Steve stops to shoot Joe a look that’s still tinged with scolding, but he can’t hide the affection, probably not even if he tried. “Joe’s the best damn training instructor there ever was,” he says softly when he turns back to meet Danny’s eyes.

“I heard that,” Joe pipes up, proudly, fondly. “Steve was my best student,” he says, in a stage whisper, winking at Danny. 

“I said shut up, Joe,” Steve throws over his shoulder, without looking. His eyes still hold a warmth, but some pain has crept in as well. Danny guesses it’s the mention of his father, but Steve continues before Danny can say anything. “At any rate, there was a malfunction, things went wrong, and Joe and Dad got stranded along with several of the Greek sailors, for a couple days on a tiny island, and they had to live off the land—well, sea—and their survival training, which because of Joe, was top notch,” he barely pauses but he can tell Danny’s head is spinning trying to keep up. “He can tell you more about that later, it’s a story he loves to tell,” Steve says, eyes rolling, but fondness still lacing his tone. “The point is, they bonded, those sailors, and after, when Dad and Joe had shore leave for a couple months, they came back here, and met the families of some of those men. Including Manos Georgoulis.” Steve pauses. “Marina’s father.”

The impact of this hits Danny like a lightbulb going off, more like exploding, over his head. “So that’s how....” 

“Yeah. They all stayed in touch after. So she knew about me, Dad sent baby pictures of me, even,” Steve admits, nearly blushing. “But we’d never actually met till just last week, when I came to see Joe about the boat.”

“I still don’t get—” 

“Hang on, I’ll get there.” 

Danny nods slightly, swallowing the questions that threaten to burst forth, and Steve continues. 

“Manos, in addition to serving in the Guard, worked building wooden boats. Which I’m sure you know, because you’ve seen the pictures on the wall in her taverna.” He hesitates. “And mostly, yes, he built those small boats like in the photos. Simple boats for the local fishermen. But his dream was to build an old fashioned sailing boat, to take people around the islands. And, you may not have noticed, but one of the pictures, high up on the back wall, is of him and two Americans in front of a large half-built ship....”

Steve’s pause for Danny to clue in is not entirely unnecessary, because Danny does have a vague sense of having noticed that photo, in the kind of half-paying attention way he’s noticed the many “local color” photos that adorn the walls of the taverna that’s basically been his second home for the past five years. Of course, most of that time he’s spent in the kitchen, focusing more on what filled the pots on the stove and trays in the oven, than the history on the walls. And he’s admittedly paid more attention to the family photos that hang where they’re easier to look closely at. But the thing that occurs to him now, in that slightly guilty way, is that he’s never really pressed her about her past—and yes, that had been in great part due to her own reluctance to talk about her family, and especially her father. But Danny has to admit a general lack of his old, pre-island, insatiable (and maybe a little bit nosy) curiosity. The truth is, he’s tended to accept that the past is past, since he’d left his own far behind him. 

Well, he’s damn curious now, that’s for sure. 

“Manos had run short on money to finish his dream ship, but this old softy,” he says, tilting his head back at Joe, who’s listening with a gentle expression on his face, and he bristles at the misnomer, but it’s only for show.

“Hey now, it was your dad’s idea,” he protests. 

“Bullshit, it was all you,” Steve says, words not nearly as hard as he no doubt intends. “At any rate, Dad and Joe invested in that ship, so Manos could finish it, and the idea was they’d come back some day and sail it together.” Steve pauses in a sigh. “But Manos died not long after he finished it, and his brothers sold it off to support Marina’s mom—that’s when she bought the taverna, which she ran until her death, when Marina took over.”

Danny has this moment of hating himself for not knowing more of the story till now, for learning it from someone other than Marina. And it’s not that he hadn’t ever asked anything about her past, but she had hated talking about it, and he sees now why. 

Joe gets up and joins them back at the table. He looks at Steve, who gestures for him to take over. “It took me a few years, but I finally tracked her down,” he says, patting the table. “Had my retirement fund of course, not that it was nearly enough, but Marina had some set away as well, and she was over the moon when I offered to buy her back and refurbish her and sail her from here.”

“Which is where I come in,” Steve says. “Joe asked me to come sail her with him, for Dad. For Manos.”

“And for _you,_ Steve,” Joe says softly, and if Danny hadn’t already been aware of Joe’s paternal feelings towards Steve, he couldn’t possibly miss it now. 

“And I said I’d come for the launch,” Steve says. “I didn’t plan on sticking around.” He bites his lip, looks at the table, and then looks up at Danny. “But then I met you.”

“So, Marina setting us up....”

Steve chuckles. “Yeah, you might have been part of my recruitment package.”

“No wonder she wanted you to stay,” Danny says, slightly in awe. “She cares very much about chosen family... which makes so much sense.”

Joe nods solemnly. “We call it _ohana,_ back in Hawaii,” he says, and the warmth in his voice Danny knows is for the family he—and Steve—have lost, because Danny knows Doris had died when Steve was still young, but he now knows his dad’s gone as well. “And it means a lot to most sailors. Means a lot to me,” Joe adds, and the look he gives Danny is somewhere between warm and accepting and hopeful, but also wary. Like he knows the weight of what Steve’s admitted here this morning, and understands, more than Danny’s already surmised, how much it means for him to have confessed it. Danny has this sharp moment of understanding how it is Joe would be so powerfully effective at training. There’s just something about him that fills you with a need to make him proud, make him pleased, earn his approval, like somehow it means so much. 

But there’s another layer of comprehension starting to blossom under Danny’s skin, which is that Steve, even given all that, hadn’t been prepared to set up shop here in the middle of the Aegean. Had planned to stop over, but not to linger, not to drop his anchor for the long haul—and yes that’s a bit of an inaccurate metaphor, but Danny’s not had quite enough coffee or sugar for this level of reasoning, okay? 

And, surprisingly, it’s Joe who somehow senses this. Or maybe he senses the shift Danny’s felt, which is probably something along the lines of realizing that chosen family sometimes chooses itself. Danny found his by following his heart when it fell in love with the island. Steve followed his sense of obligation to his chosen family (and his dad's chosen family), and Marina accepted Steve because he was family of chosen family—which Danny knows would have meant to her that Steve had _been_ family all along. When Danny’d said to Steve that Marina had decided he belonged here... he now sees that it was merely something she’d known from long before they’d even met. 

The Greeks, of course, are still pretty big on Fate. Danny’s soaked a little of that up himself, through his own Greek experiences. And there’s definitely something about all of this that feels very heavily Fated. 

All of which is summed pretty nicely up when Joe stands and says “I think I’ll make us some breakfast. Steve, could you make coffee?”

And it turns out Danny was right to imagine that this little kitchen is more than up to the task, or maybe there’s just something about food cooked on the water, like the salt content influences the flavor, maybe through the hull of the ship, or from the air itself—or maybe it’s that whole stereotype about naval cooking again, because it’s only seemingly moments before Steve’s got them sizable mugs full of more of that fabulous Hawaiian coffee, and the sizzle of bacon fills Danny’s senses with familiarity, a sense of _home,_ and all of it is woven through with some deep knowing that this is just _right._

How Steve could think he might leave this, Danny doesn’t understand. Except that he thinks maybe he does, and he wants to remind Steve what he’s already tried to prove to him in bed, that he does deserve to be cared for, is worthy of belonging... is wanted, _is loved._ And he fully plans on making that as abundantly clear as he can later that night, but for now he does it the best he can through touches and looks and closeness, and he thinks he feels the shift as Steve accepts it a little bit more, leaning in to Danny, resting his leg against Danny’s under the table, even twining fingers together, as their hands rest next to each other atop the table, a small gesture with big meaning—amplified, as it’s plain for Joe to see, and yet all the more intimate as it is, stunningly, simply, _amongst family._

They eat pancakes with actual maple syrup, omelettes with peppers and onions, and more bacon than Danny’s had in five long years, all washed down with two more mugs of that fantastic coffee, while Steve and Joe go over a list of the hoops the ship still has to clear before she can begin her long neglected life’s work. After they've eaten more than their fill, they lay out sea charts across the broad tabletop, and outline possible routes for single-day fishing sailings, morning snorkeling experiences, evening pleasure (and cocktail or dinner) cruises, and a couple ideas for week-long voyages, which Danny adjusts to take in those islands where he knows his fellow hoteliers will be willing to extend their hospitality.

There’s potential here, the businessman in him sees it, as clear as though dollar signs were flashing before his eyes. But there’s a deeper passion beneath it as well—and that’s another thing the Greeks are awfully fond of. Doing what you do _for the love of it._ Which is so clear in Joe’s voice when he talks about what the ship can do, and it’s clear in his eyes when he watches Steve analyze the charts, and Danny thinks he even sees it when he catches Joe watching Steve watch Danny, as he explains about the inter-island coalition of small hotels, and how they’ve longed for just such a ship. 

“Welcome to the family,” Joe whispers when they shake hands a second time, considerably later in the day, as Danny prepares to head back up the hill, agreeing to meet up with them both at Marina’s for dinner that evening. 

“You, too,” Danny whispers back, and the answering smile of recognition on Joe’s face reminds Danny very much of another sailor’s smile, and that warms his already sunshine-filled heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter on Friday.


	3. Chapter 3

Danny makes it back up the hill in some sort of mindless, timeless, thought-filled bubble of feeling. That kind of floaty, fuzzy, full feeling you get when you’ve been completely overwhelmed by something, but in a good way. 

So much about his life, his way of being, has changed in the past week, and yet... and yet it has fitted so perfectly, it’s more as though things have simply, finally, leveled up. As though nothing that now is, isn’t what it had been preparing to be all along. And as much as that doesn’t really make sense, it’s the only thing that does, and if any part of him wanted to resist, he doesn’t think he could. But as he very much _doesn’t,_ he enjoys letting it play out, swirling around him in a sort of all-encompassing bubbly cyclone of warmth and contented feelings. 

Of course, just about as soon as he’s managed to express the thought in something approximating coherence, he feels a frisson of apprehension, shuddering across his skin as though he’s brushed up against something threatening, or seen something scary out of the corner of his eye. 

Muttering, he attempts to talk himself through it, reminding himself it actually is possible to be happy and not start seeing doom every which way he looks. It’s not a talk he’s had to give himself all that much the past few years, and he’s unfortunately more than a little rusty.

So it is that by the time he reaches the hotel, he is less in a bubble of happiness, and a little bit more in a fractured buzz of anxiety seeping in—or more likely, _out._

Thalia, prone to attacks of self-doubt herself, recognizes the expression on his face instantly, if the look in her eyes is anything to go by. 

He slinks by her and the front desk, settling into his office, but leaving the door open to eavesdrop. She’s dealing deftly with their newest arrivals, an adventurous Swiss couple who’ve taken to coming every year just before high season for a week of hiking and wine tasting, frequently combining the two with a stunning amount of eating and hardly any loafing about. They’re inquiring about a trail across the island to the black sand beaches, and Danny can’t help but wish he could mention that next year they will be able to take a stunning wooden ship to their destination.

“Your German’s improving,” Danny says with a proud grin when she’s sent them off with a hand-drawn map and a reminder to take water and wear sunscreen.

He hears a _hmmm,_ then smells coffee, hears a cup being poured from the pot that sits on their welcome desk, perpetually ready for those who might need it—of whom Danny is the most frequent user. 

She brings it to him, perching on the corner of his desk and eyeing him suspiciously.

He takes a sip of the coffee, but that makes the feeling of weirdness even weirder, because he can still taste the rich, flavorful Kona coffee, and his usual favorite stings bitterly on his tongue. 

With a grimace, he sets it aside, at which gesture her eyes flash with concern, and she slides off the desk, pulling the spare chair from against the wall, right up against Danny’s, drawing their knees together, and grabbing his hands. 

“What happened?”

He looks up at her, at the care and concern so shiningly clear on her face, and it chokes him up and makes him laugh in one awkward tumble of emotion.

“It’s his boat,” he manages. “Well, nearly his—his dad’s, well, Marina’s dad’s, well, Joe’s and Steve’s dad and Manos’s....”

“Dan-o, you are making no sense,” she says, squeezing his hands, and it’s a simple gesture, but he instantly recognizes it as one he’d used frequently on her when she was younger and prone to panicking about mistakes she made as she was learning the business. 

That, more than any talking to he’d attempted to give himself, breaks his cycle of anxiety, and he smiles, mostly to himself. He’s not about to take credit for the amazing woman she’s become, but he will take credit for this, for her ability to deal with his panic just as deftly as she deals with bold and adventuresome guests. 

“ _The ship_ ,” Danny says. “Steve is part of the story behind it.”

That’s at least given them a clear starting place. She nods for him to continue, letting his hands go a little but not releasing them, for which he’s frankly grateful. 

“He took me down to the docks, and I guess I figured he might take me out on his boat again or something, but he walked right up to that huge sailboat, the tall one everyone’s been admiring, and it turns out he knows the guy who’s been sailing it.”

The smile that starts to spread across her face shows she’s guessing where this is going, and when Danny doesn’t immediately continue, she tugs impatiently at his hands. 

“Okay, I’m getting there. So this guy Joe, who is a friend of the family—no, that doesn’t cover it... he trained Steve at the Navy, I guess? And he was best friends with Steve’s dad. They served together, in the Navy. And while they were serving, they did a mission here, with the Greek Navy, and they got shipwrecked on an island and they met Marina’s dad.”

She’s gone very very still. “Joe White and John McGarrett?” She asks softly, voice nearly awed. 

Danny realizes he hadn’t learned Joe’s last name, or Steve’s dad’s first, but the Joe and the McGarrett are improbably accurate. How many other American sailors could there be who would be known in such a scenario?

“What do you know?” He asks, pulse speeding up.

“Everyone knows... oh, Danny. They saved my grandfather’s life.” She mutters something in Greek, far too fast for Danny to understand, but when he squeezes her hand, she looks into his eyes, and he sees hers are wet. “Why did she not tell me?” 

It’s Danny’s turn to be confused. “Why didn’t who tell you what?”

“That Joe is here. That he found it. Any of it. All of it....”

“Marina, you mean?”

Thalia nods, clearly still stunned. 

Danny shrugs. “Yeah, I don’t know why she’s been so... secretive about it.”

He gets a little bit lost in wondering that himself, but he feels her energy shift, and she’s suddenly squirming in her seat. “Can I meet him? I have to meet him. I need to....”

“Who, Joe? Yeah, sweetheart, of course, come with us tonight, we’re gonna have dinner at the taverna. Of course you should come.”

“But the desk—” she starts to protest, but Danny shushes her. 

“We'll leave a note and my cell. It’ll be fine for one evening. Or I could get Alekos to look in on things.”

“Better not,” she says, suddenly. 

“Why not?” Danny asks curiously, and his first thought is about their celebrity guest, but he knows she would be utterly immune to even Alekos’s charms, for the simple reason of body parts. 

“Everyone on the island knows the story. Everyone knows someone who was part of what happened. Alekos and Tryfon’s uncle—the one who taught them to sail? He was on the boat that found them. They would both want to meet Joe. Obviously you did not tell Alekos Steve’s last name.”

Danny shrugs. It hadn’t occurred to him—after all, who uses last names anymore. It hadn’t even come up. Danny had only vaguely been aware of it himself. 

“I’ll leave a note. But you’re coming with me.” 

Thalia glows at him. “Thank you. I can not believe it, I really.... They always said they would come back some day, but after Marina’s father, and the boat, we just thought....”

And whatever else anyone might have thought, no more of it gets discussed that afternoon, as Thalia gets roped into one of her exquisite flower arranging classes, by the pool, with cocktails, and Danny’s citrus slicing arm gets a good workout as pitcher upon pitcher of ouzo-spiked lemonade is demanded by the effusive—and incredibly well-tipping—Hollywood guests. 

*

Thalia takes longer than usual to get ready that evening. 

Danny stands leaning against her doorway, as she fusses with her hair, her clothes, her shoes. The only reason it’s at all amusing is she’s never like this, and he frequently is. 

“I do not laugh at you, Dan-o, when you try on everything you own twice,” she scolds when he can’t contain himself anymore and flat out chuckles as she ends up back in the first thing she’d put on, pulling her hair loose from the frustrated ponytail she’d pulled it into not two minutes before. 

“Yes you do,” he says fondly, as he pulls her into a hug. “Relax, kiddo, you look great.”

“Easy for you to say,” she mutters as she squirms out of his grasp and locks her door. “You would look good in a bag.”

“A sack? No. But Steve would....”

“I do not need to hear that, thank you,” she says, playfully elbowing him as they head down the slope to Marina’s.

Steve and Joe are headed up the hill at the same time, and they meet on the path in front of the restaurant, Steve’s eyes sparkling at Danny’s appearance, as, presumably, his are at Steve’s. They’ve both chosen relaxed trousers in lightweight cotton, but both gone for dark blue shirts—Danny’s with his sleeves rolled up, Steve’s in short sleeves, tight enough they show the bottom edges of his tattoos off just that little bit to make Danny’s skin tingle. 

But it’s Joe’s expression as he sees Thalia that’s the far more beautiful thing in that hillside, sun setting moment.

“No... it can’t be. Thalia? Oh my god how you’ve grown!” He surprises Steve and Danny both, but Thalia most of all, by sweeping her into his arms. “I was so sorry to hear of your grandmother’s passing. I hope you got my card.”

She’s wiping tears from her eyes, babbling something about her reply being returned, not knowing how to reach him, and he shushes her, offering a genuine cloth handkerchief with a soft, warm, fond smile. “I should have told you, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to find the ship or not, but I’d already set out looking—”

“But you _did_ find her, and you are here now. Marina must be delighted.”

Joe grins. “I hope she will be. She’s refused to come see her before the work is done. I haven’t dared set foot in here yet, because I’m not sure how I’ll hold up....” 

What Joe's uncertain about gets revealed when the door opens and Marina steps out.

“Are you planning on entering or just blocking my door all night, Joe White?” And Danny recognizes that tone, has been subjected to it a number of times himself, and he holds his breath for Joe, as he sees the anxiety play out on his face while the steely woman before them decides his fate. It’s only half a breath more before she’s launching herself at him, and thank god he’s sturdy on his feet, because he catches her just as easily as he’d lifted the much slighter Thalia, and he spins Marina around like she’s still the child he once knew. 

Her hand settles on his cheek as he sets her down. “You look well, old man,” she says softly. “We have missed you.”

He takes her hand and kisses it. “And I’ve missed you, my dear.”

*

She’s laid them a feast, of course. 

Bottles of white wine and sparkling water sit amid platters of mezze in the center of the round table in the corner, under the row of photographs that includes the one of Joe, and the man Danny now knows is Steve’s dad. He wonders why he’s never thought to question that particular photo’s placement. All the other photos of Manos, of his boats, are closer to the edges of the room, places she regularly walks by them, places she can touch them. This one, along with the more general photos of the old village—shops and fields that are no longer—graces the high wall at center of the room, ostensibly the place of honor. 

It’s also the only photo, he realizes now, of the big ship. All the closer photos, the more familiar ones, are of much smaller boats, completed ones. Which is why he’d never realized the big boat existed, of course. 

Well. That, and Marina never mentioning it. 

The mezze are some of Danny’s favorites. Olives and bread and oil to dip, of course, but also the fussier and less frequently made perfect tubes of filo that Danny knows are rolled around a bright and lemony spinach and feta filling. There’s chilled roasted veggies, baked goat's cheese, and a thick spread made of roasted tomatoes and probably eggplant. Dinner will be roast lamb, Danny’s sure of it. It’s a celebratory meal. This, from a woman prone to celebrate a random Tuesday just as readily as she’d celebrate a local festival. 

Marina joins them at the table—which is nearly unheard of. She sits next to Joe (Thalia claiming his other side) and across from Steve, and she spends her time, as they pour drinks and nibble on the appetizers, looking between the two sailors almost as though she’s conjuring up the past through their presence here tonight. 

She catches Danny watching her, over his glass of wine, and her expression turns from distant and bittersweet to her more usual eyebrows raised, insinuating glance, nodding in Steve’s direction as though to say _I told you so._ Danny rolls his eyes, and mimes catching the kiss she blows him. 

“So, when do we get to go out on the ship?” Thalia asks, reaching for a cluster of roasted mini tomatoes and popping one in her mouth. “I want to see where you could add flowers.”

Joe’s eyes twinkle playfully as he turns to look at her. “How _is_ your lovely aunt?” He asks, and Danny’s eyes flick over to Marina to see if she knows there’s a story there, between Joe and the woman who now runs Thalia’s grandmother’s flower shop. She shrugs and winks back. _So, that’s a yes...._

Danny’s missed Thalia’s reply, but it’s not like he can’t get details from her later. 

Meanwhile, Thalia’s gone off on an explanation about how fresh florals on a ship isn’t as strange as it sounds, as she’s got some theory about how, when you’re at sea, having plants and flowers aboard is especially meaningful, besides which it’s a more pleasing decoration than, say, patterned fabrics (which apparently is too typical a move when trying to add color against a dominantly blue and white backdrop). 

Joe delights her by being genuinely interested and asking follow up questions, and Danny’s heart swells to see her so pleased—though he also knows she has far more in mind than the placement of floral arrangements.

Steve, perhaps noting Joe’s own pleasure at the engagement with someone he’s clearly longed to meet in person, rests his hand warmly on Danny’s thigh as they both watch the sweet interaction. When Danny looks over at Steve, he smiles, gives Danny’s leg a squeeze, and turns back to the others, joining in on the story Joe’s been roped into telling about, well, the ropes he’s chosen for the ship. 

By the time it’s devolved into sailor speak and Danny’s utterly lost, Marina gestures for him to help her in the kitchen, and he’s more than happy to oblige.

He’s also had enough wine and far too few of the mezze, and he rather bluntly blurts out what he’s been wondering all day. 

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

She smiles, kind, but amused. “Which part, my boy? How my livelihood, my passion, is built on the wreck of my Papa’s dream? How my inheritance had been sold away by my uncles without asking my mother what _she_ wanted?” She pauses, but of course he has no response to that. “Or about the story behind just one photograph of so many that hang on my wall?”

He sighs. “I don’t know. I just... I’m so sorry. I just wish I’d known.”

She rests a hand on his arm. “Did I ask you about your scars? Your wounds? The hurts you fled?”

“No... and I always loved that about you.”

She nods, expression uncharacteristically somber. “I know. And I always loved it about _you_. Us who have old hurts, we know. We see it in each other. And we find each other, and heal it in each other. By loving each other as we are, wounds and all. You never asked because you knew I did not wish to tell. And I never told because you let me be who I am _without_ that pain. And I will always be grateful for that.” She kisses him on his cheek. “And now I get to be grateful that John’s son is where he belongs, and with you, who are my heart’s son. And that makes me want to dance. But first, we eat.”

And eat, they most definitely do.

The main dish is indeed lamb. And it is perfection. Not that Danny would expect anything less. Marina may have fallen into cooking through the heartbreaking loss of her father and his dream ship that should have been his financial making—and her inheritance. But the restaurant her mother started with the funds from the ship’s sale became Marina’s calling. And there’s something fitting about that Danny can’t help but love. 

Dessert is a dense but somehow still light cake, flavored with orange blossom water and pistachios and of course drenched in a honey syrup. 

“Your mother would be so proud,” Joe says after one bite of the delectable sweet. 

She glows at the praise in a way Danny’s not seen her take a compliment before. Marina knows she’s a good cook, and she’ll brag about her own creations—like she had to Danny about her new sauce only just recently. But she’s so naturally good at cooking, she really doesn’t mean much by it, and any time someone goes a little over the top in their praise of her cooking, she doesn’t just wave it off with mock humility, she simply dismisses it as the ravings of an over-effusive fool. 

But not in this case. She smiles slightly waterily, and leans her head on Joe’s shoulder, her turn to seem just the child she’d been when he’d first landed on her island, tall and young and handsome and a hero. 

“Eat your cake, old man,” she says fondly. “Then we are going dancing.”

Steve and Thalia, not having shared the early warning Danny’d had about the evening’s schedule, stir out of their sleepy post-meal haze at that, and both grab for their coffee, to Danny’s amusement. 

Joe, for his part, grins, eyes twinkling, and resumes eating his cake. 

*

Marina leaves the restaurant in the capable hands of her staff. Dishwashers, servers, hosts, cooks... everyone does everything, and they all do it well and with love. It’s one of Danny’s favorite things about the locals here. No one minds hard work. 

But no one shies from a good time either. 

Marina and Joe lead the way, her arm in his, heads together, chatting easily and animatedly in Greek. He can’t have much more than a decade on her, but they’ve clearly fallen into the patterns of their prior relationship—he’s smitten with her, she knows she’s got him around her little finger, and neither of them would have it any other way. 

Thalia hangs back with Steve and Danny, clinging to Danny’s side as if for warmth, though he knows it’s because she’s missing those who are no longer here to see the return of the American sailor the island had adopted as one of their own, so many years before. 

“ _Yaya_ would have loved to see this,” she says, leaning even more into Danny, almost knowing he’s aware it’s where her mind has gone. 

Danny kisses the side of her head, pulls Steve closer on his other side, and the three of them amble slowly up the hill behind the two reacquainted old friends. 

Steve’s been entrusted with a package of their leftovers, intended for Tryfon and Alekos. It’s still early by Greek standards, and the chances they’ve eaten, Danny thinks, are slim. What doesn’t occur to him, till they’re at the door, and immediately he can tell the bar is way fuller than it ordinarily would be at this time of night, is that Marina had told the brothers they would be joining them after their meal... and the brothers obviously told a fair few of the island’s residents. 

It’s an overwhelming wash of faces and hugs and handshakes, set to raucous local music and fueled by ample glasses of the house ouzo. Danny abandons Steve to the fawning throng to work his way to the bar, handing the package of food over to Tryfon, who has ensconced himself firmly in his safe zone. Alekos, of course is in the middle of it all, arm wrapped firmly around Joe’s shoulder, Marina held tightly to his other side. He, also, is in his element. 

“She made her lamb?” Tryfon asks Danny, opening the cloth wrapping to look inside. 

“She did,” Danny replies with a knowing smile. Alekos may be exuberant about his desire for Marina, but Danny knows from years of observation, Tryfon is just as fond. He just shows it in subtler ways. 

“Come,” he says, lifting the hinged part of the bar to allow Danny to join him on the other side. “You pour drinks for me,” and he settles in the corner, where a barstool sits, rarely used, but there should he so desire. And it’s then Danny sees just how happy the mellower brother is at Joe’s triumphant return with the much beloved, much missed boat. 

Danny pours him a _retsina_ to go with his meal, and leaves him to his food and drink, positioning himself as a buffer for the more animated patrons desiring a top up. 

It’s not long before Thalia finds him, acknowledging the honor he’s been granted, allowed behind the sacred slab of wood. 

“Water, _please,_ Dan-o!” She cries, collapsing dramatically against the countertop. 

He pours four glasses of water, she downs one, and carries two out to Joe and Marina, sending Steve back for the third. Danny’s refilled Thalia’s, but doesn’t mind that Steve lingers while he drinks some of his own.

“How you holding up?” Danny asks lightly. He can tell, just as he had the very first time he’d seen him, Steve’s more than comfortable being the center of such attention. What Danny sees about it now is a subtlety he’d missed before, which is that Steve doesn’t mind it because he doesn’t take it as his due. He accepts the attention, honors it, but in the way a good quarterback gives the credit to his defense and his receivers, he is aware he’s a figurehead for the praise, the adoration directed at him. 

Danny’s not sure it’s something he would know how to do. 

Steve leans over the bar and kisses Danny lightly and far too quickly, before returning to the adoring throng. 

The dancing starts, seemingly out of nowhere, but Danny soon realizes it’s Tryfon, of all surprises, who switched the music. He meets Danny’s questioning look with a shrug, and he’s no more idea if it’s his way of clearing out the bar by closing time, or if he genuinely wants to see his brother happy. 

If it’s the latter, he’s sure to be at least partly disappointed, as it’s Joe Marina begins the dancing with. Steve hoists Thalia up on the bar with him, and Danny beams at her obvious enjoyment. By the middle of the next song, Alekos has managed, through whatever flight of trickery at which he so excels, to have shifted partners so Joe is next to Thalia, and Marina is rather contentedly ensconced in Alekos’s arms. 

Steve, thus freed, hops off the bar on Danny’s side, helps himself to several bottles, mixing with an expertness Danny knows shouldn’t surprise him, setting up a row of shots along the non-dancing side of the behind the bar area, pouring the suspiciously milky looking concoction into the waiting vessels with not quite but almost the level of precision Alekos had demonstrated only just the other day. 

“Do I want to know?” Danny yells, to be heard over the blare of the music. 

“Probably not,” Steve replies, grinning. 

When the music transitions to something more romantic, Joe jumps down, then catches Thalia easily in his arms, and after a moment waiting for the others to join, Danny prompts Steve not to bother waiting, and he hands them each a shot.

“To new ventures,” Steve offers, which leads to an uptick in the size of Joe’s smile.

“To safe voyages,” Thalia adds, as Joe’s arm around her tugs her close. 

“ _Aloha_ ,” Joe concludes, and they all echo the Hawaiian blessing known for its multifaceted purpose, fitting here for a number of reasons.

The drink is sweet but not cloying, bright but not sharp, somehow energizing, yet simultaneously relaxing.

“Dance with me,” Steve says, holding out his hand once he’s taken Danny’s glass from him. 

“Not on the bar,” Danny protests, never minding being in a prominent or visible place only assuming it’s behind the bar, behind the desk, behind the counter. Never _atop_ it. 

He can tell Steve’s considering forcing the issue, but something shifts and he relents, simply nodding, and taking his hand to lead him out to the floor where a few couples and several small groups remain. It’s an upbeat tune, not really suited for slow dancing, for which Danny’s actually grateful. The thought of allowing his body to press even lightly against his lover’s tempting frame is not one he imagines would remain PG for long. 

Steve, evidently of much the same mind takes advantage of a playful twirl to whisper in Danny’s ear: “How soon do you think we can escape?” And on the next pass: “I’ve been thinking about getting you naked all day.” He follows it up with a look that’s even more explicit, and Danny is nearly tempted to take his hand and walk directly out the door right then and there.

But they don’t leave early. They stay pretty much until the end, sitting out front for fresh air, the music mellowing, dancing turning into a sing-along led by Alekos, turning into conversations in a swirl of English and Greek, more rapid native sections fired off between thoughtful moments of interpretation, Joe’s Greek having been polished by his two-year long quest to find and refurbish the stately ship that now sits, at home, in the harbor. Those who linger, after the larger crowd of hangers on dissipates, are those with greater interest in the true tale. People Danny’s known for years, people who remember Steve’s dad, people who have only heard the story, some dusty memory told by a grandparent, lore more than fact. 

Joe corrects some of the larger mistruths about the wreck. It was a simple electrical fire, not a dramatic lightning strike in the midst of a mythic storm. The boat was old, outdated, in need of repair, something the not at all inexperienced crew—who were accustomed to wooden sailing boats, not modern mechanical tactical ships—was in no position to have known. John himself had only spotted it too late. She’d foundered on some rocks they hadn’t been able to see, and they’d made it off the burning ship and onto a just large enough island mostly consisting of a very mythically evocative stack of rocks, lashed by waves, no fresh water, no rations, only one small survival kit Joe had had the sense to keep on his person at all times—back in those days, and even now, he admits, as he pulls a small pouch from somewhere in the depths of a cargo pants pocket. 

Danny glances down at Steve’s own cargos, eyebrow raised. 

“Nope,” Steve says softly, tilting his pelvis forward. “That’s all for you.”

Danny rolls his eyes, but probably blushes. 

Tryfon adds the other side of the tale, the search and rescue, which had been carried out by his uncle, and which he, though only a teenager, had been aware of. Alekos, having been much younger, shares his memories of the return of the sailors to the island, and the sense of relief he’d picked up on from the adults. It’s the elder Tryfon who is able to add the clarifying context of political intrigue—that many of the island leaders had been warning of just such a looming catastrophe, and how it was the presence of the Americans that led the powers that be to face reality, as they would otherwise not have, preferring for fiscal reasons to simply sweep the incident under the rug and continue to run dangerously outdated ships with dangerously under-trained sailors. 

That, Tryfon concludes, is the real reason for the island’s esteem of the American Naval “heroes.” 

“That is a far less romantic tale,” Thalia mopes when he’s finished his story with a coda about his uncle’s ultimate success in acquiring new and nearly state of the art ships and technical training courses for the local Guard. 

“Ah, but it’s the more important one,” Joe says, sympathetically. “Not that romance isn’t worthy all on its own,” he says, and he manages to not meet either Steve’s eyes or Danny’s, which is seriously impressive.

They linger, back inside the bar, as the brothers close up. 

“Come sailing on her next week?” Joe offers, including both brothers, Thalia, who has remained close by his side, and Marina, who has been periodically reaching out to touch him as though needing to verify he’s real and not some hallucination conjured up by her emotional need. 

All four enthusiastically agree to a two day test cruise to an inlet Joe’s found that he thinks will be his most popular spot. 

Joe turns to Steve. “I could really use a first mate,” he says, hopeful, but bordering on certain.

Steve turns to check with Danny. “Only if—” 

“Of course I’ll come,” Danny replies. 

“That’s settled, then!” Marina says, standing and wiping her hands on her slacks, and proceeding to lead her party out the door and back down the slope, leaving Alekos, Danny notes, lingering in the doorway as he should be locking it, watching after them. He blows Danny a kiss, which Danny returns, and Alekos closes the door. 

*

“You sure you don’t want to sleep on land for a change?” Danny offers for a third time, as they stand at the door to the hotel, Thalia having waved them all a sleepy goodnight and gone off to bed. 

Joe chuckles, shrugging. “I’ve gotten too used to sleeping on the water, I wouldn’t sleep very well on land,” he says, avoiding eye contact with Steve, possibly realizing he’s not alone in that category and that Steve doesn’t object in the least. And in fact, Danny doesn’t have to look to know that Steve’s avoiding Joe’s look just the same.

“Come, Joe, let us leave these two to their rest,” Marina says, tugging gently on his arm, through which hers has been threaded since they left the bar. 

Danny’s the one who undermines her attempt to neutralize the situation, with a slight—and completely unintentional—scoff that makes it clear he at least has no intention of _resting_ any time soon.

Marina hears it, and her dark eyes flash with the knowledge that she was right, and she applies more force to pull Joe away and in the direction of their destination further down the hill—though whether she’ll stop half way down or continue all the way to the bottom, Danny isn’t about to guess. 

Steve stands unmoving in the open doorway as they watch the taller grey head move away, alongside the shorter and still brown haired one. 

“That’s a very sweet picture,” Steve murmurs. 

Danny _Mmmms_ in response. “I think Alekos couldn’t decide if he should be jealous or not.”

Steve chuckles. “I think Alekos couldn’t decide if he should try flirting with Joe instead.”

Danny’s mouth falls a little open, but he has to concede the point. “Would that be likely to succeed?”

“I think Joe would say they’re both too young for him,” Steve admits. “He’s still of the mindset he was back then... he’s an adult, they’re children... even though a dozen or so years age difference means a lot less with four decades having gone by.”

“Does she know that?”

Steve turns to face Danny. “From what I know, what I’ve seen, yes. And she feels the same way.”

It’s what Danny’s guessed as well, but he’s pleased to have Steve’s affirmation. And it’s not as though Danny’s ever held out much hope that she would succumb to Alekos’s advances (though she has seemed surprisingly open to them of late). It’s more that Danny’s always imagined that if Marina ever ended up with anyone _but_ Alekos, it would break his heart. 

Once the subjects of speculation vanish around a bend, Danny heads inside to check nothing's awry, which it’s not, and he turns to Steve, who’s closed the door behind him, and flashes him a grin that’s probably at least a little bit giddy. 

“I’ve never slept with a celebrity before,” he says teasingly. 

“Haven’t you?” Steve asks, seeming genuinely surprised, before clueing in he’s being teased, and dismissing the notion more than objecting. “I’m _not,_ and Dad was only doing his duty. Besides, it was Joe the island fell in love with.” His smile softens. “It is nice to know some things don’t change. But it’ll be good to see him settle down and be happy.”

“You make it sound like he’s marrying the island.”

“I’m not sure that isn’t how he feels.”

“And,” Danny says, stepping closer to Steve, twining his fingers in that delightfully frustratingly too tight shirt. “How do _you_ feel?”

Steve solidifies his stance, lets Danny pull himself against Steve’s broad, tight chest. _Solid as a rock, that’s how he feels,_ his mind supplies with pleasured irritation. “What do you think?” Steve replies, grabbing Danny by the ass and drawing him in.

“I think it’s time for bed,” Danny says, without any move to head that direction, unwilling to disrupt the moment. 

Steve makes no move either way—closer to Danny or further away to head towards his room. It’s utterly annoying and overwhelmingly tantalizing and completely sexy.

Finally Danny caves, capturing Steve’s lips in his, and as though he were spring loaded, Steve seizes him by the backs of thighs, hoists him up and into his arms, Danny’s legs wrapping around him, and carries him off to the bedroom... by way of the shower.

They wash each other with a practiced ease that belies their short acquaintance, more kisses and preparation than actual soapy cleansing, and by the time they fall into bed, they are moving almost as one, Steve letting himself be pulled atop Danny, sliding so easily _home_ Danny nearly comes apart at the seams as soon as he’s seated. When Steve starts to move, deliciously slowly, his muscular control on vivid display, his face is awash with bliss, tinted with an ease, an at-home-ness that surpasses all previous such hints at the notion Steve’s capable of feeling “at home” anywhere other than on the sea. 

“I want you to stay,” Danny gasps, as he nears his orgasm, filters not just muted or disabled, but utterly demolished by the pleasure, the fatedness, the rightness of their union, their coupling, their merging into one. 

Steve pauses, and it’s so brief, if Danny weren’t able to feel Steve’s pulse almost as though it were his own he might have missed it. As it is, Danny’s nearly certain he’d be aware of every twitch, every thrum, every beat of Steve’s heart. 

“I want to stay,” Steve says, almost at the precise moment be begins to pump Danny full to bursting—as though it’s the mere thought, the admission, rather than the phenomenal sex, that drives his orgasm so powerfully from him.

Full-to-bursting is apt, alright, and the sensation—of the swelling of his heart as much as if not more than the imminent leaking from inside him—pushes him over nearly that split second before Steve’s hand lands on his painfully swollen dick and he spurts, hot and copiously, across them both.

“Fuuuck,” Danny grunts, as Steve collapses on top of him, but when Steve moves to slide off, Danny grasps his back firmly and growls “ _Don’t you dare move_ ,” and holds him firmly in place, crushing him, making it impossible for Danny to move, barely able to breathe, and wanting this moment, this feeling, to last as long as it possibly might. 

It’s not nearly as long as he might hope, before he really seriously is in need of air, and Steve agilely moves off, nearly lifting Danny yet again, and returning them to the shower where they waste far too much water, washing only absently as they kiss until sleep threatens to overpower them, and they’ve no choice but to return to bed, tossing aside the top, mussed sheet, neglecting to put clothes on, and crashing, in a still damp and tangled heap of sated limbs and contented murmurs, and they fall, deeply, blissfully, asleep. 

***

Much of Danny’s next few days are taken up with making preparations to be away from the hotel for two days, and though their bookings during that time are sparse, and the Hollywood contingent will be gone by then, Danny does have a number of potential drop-ins who typically show up virtually unannounced this time of year, and without advanced notice, he's loathe to leave them in the lurch. So he decides to call on the services that have always been offered, but not yet called upon.

But not without checking with her niece first. 

“Of course _T_ _heía_ Riina will do it!” Thalia exclaims when Danny asks if she thinks it would be unwise to ask her aunt to run the place while they galavant around the islands with someone with whom she’s evidently got some sort of a _past._ “She is very much in love with _T_ _heía_ Sofia, you know this. So, if you are asking out of concern that Joe’s miraculous return to the island might prove a temptation, the answer is _no_.”

Thalia’s tone has gotten progressively more Greek as she’s spoken, and she ends, hands on hips, like she’s ready to continue her diatribe if Danny so much as blinks, so he very carefully smiles, backs away, hands out in surrender, and cheerfully heads out the door to go ask—politely, and in the Greek way. In person, and with offerings. 

Stopping first by the corner wine shop for a bottle of what Danny knows is Riina and Sofia’s favorite (imported and not inexpensive) deep and earthy old vine Zin, he then heads further into town, to the beloved flower shop where he’d first met the matriarch of the family, Thalia’s _Yaya,_ so many years ago. Danny’d assumed at the time they were three generations, grandmother, mother, and daughter. It hadn’t been til later he’d learned that Thalia’s mom had, as so many of her generation, fled the island for the continent, and cities even beyond the Grecian realms. Madrid, he thinks, is where she’d ended up. Sending the occasional postcard, always near to but never precisely on Thalia’s birthday. It had hurt Danny’s family oriented heart, though somewhat hypocritically, he did realize, as he’d similarly fled his own hometown, and for not altogether different reasons, though he liked to imagine he’d never have left a child. Still, he tried not to judge too harshly. Besides, Thalia never seemed anything but contented with her family situation, and dearly loved both her mother-aunts, and had nearly worshiped her kind-hearted, floral loving grandmother, who had taught her everything she knew about flowers—and more importantly, people. 

The shop is freshly painted, like most of the island, the pale lavender trim nearly sparkling in the mid-morning sun. Pots of ferns and orchids grace the window display, tempting fate in such an arid land with their delicate and vastly more temperate fragility. It’s one of the many juxtapositions he adores, but he adores even more the nearly aggressive hospitality that awaits him when he opens the door—that light tinkling of the old fashioned shopkeeper’s bell announcing his arrival and drawing Riina from the back with a lilting “ _Kalimera_.”

“Dan-o,” she exclaims, using her niece’s pet name for him. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” 

He wordlessly hands her the bottle, nestled in the slim paper wrapping, and her eyes twinkle with mischief. 

“Either you’ve been very bad, or you’re planning on being very bad.” Her lips quirk into a delighted grin. “How can I help?”

He laughs. “How much has Thalia told you?”

“About your beautiful Adonis?”

Danny chuckles but also no doubt blushes at her bluntness. “Or the rest of it?”

“The mythic return of the island’s golden boy? Now handsomely white-haired to match his name,” she muses fondly—but certainly, it seems to him, not longingly. Danny’s relieved, not just as he adores Sofia, but because he knows what it is to long for a former love. Though he is swiftly forgetting.

Riina has caught his concern, and cups his cheek adoringly. “You are sweet to be concerned, and I did pine for him—who could not? If he is half as... _charismatic_... as he was then, no one would not love him.” She smiles warmly. “Joe is a good man, as was John. And I hear his son is as well.” She searches deep in Danny’s eyes, and he has that sense again of being seen utterly through, that all Greeks—but maybe especially the women—seem to possess. “I am glad,” she says, having evidently found whatever she was looking for. “It is time you found love. Few deserve it as well as you.” 

It’s a complicated sentiment, but Danny knows her meaning well enough. The florist’s shop combined with her love and her passions aside from the family flowers (she and Sofia also run the farm that supplies much of Marina’s produce as well as the botanicals Alekos uses in his special bottled drinks) is more than enough a life for her, but she had, before Danny’s precipitous landing on the island, despaired for her niece’s future, wanting more for her ambitious ward than simply a shopkeeper’s career. Besides which, her own feelings about her sister’s lack of family commitment and Thalia’s resultant lack of a father figure, is muted by her own and Sofia’s filling of the parental roles, but Danny knows she’d been pleased by Danny’s presence in the girl’s life, and more than pleased by the status he’d so easily granted her, both at the hotel and in his heart. 

They chat easily about the boat and the proposed trial voyage, and Riina readily agrees to take hotel duty for the duration. Danny’s offer of the top floor suite, as a pre-season vacation of sorts, for her and Sofia, earns him a kiss on the cheek and a smack on the ass, and he heads back to share the good news with a decided spring in his step. 

*

It’s later that afternoon, and Steve’s been down at the ship with Joe since early morning, doing whatever ship things need to happen, when Alekos stops by with a delivery of drinks for the pool deck cooler. Danny’s been re-stringing a couple of the chaises with a more sun-resistant fiber, some fancy new high tech thing Thalia found during one of her slow-day-at-the-desk internet binges. Alekos stands watching him, once he’s filled the cooler, and Danny’s used to feeling on display with Alekos. He just has this way of watching you like you’re far more compelling than you could possibly realize. And always when Danny’s doing something utterly non-interesting. 

“You gonna help? Or just stand there looking pretty?” Danny tosses, offering their usual teasing non-flirtation, but when Alekos isn’t quick to flirt back, Danny pauses what he’s doing and looks up. What he sees, on that handsome, familiar, much-loved face, stops Danny in his tracks. “Hey hey hey. Okay. Sit.” He instructs, setting his tools down, and steering his friend into the nearest already re-assembled seat. “Spill,” he instructs, but gently.

Alekos huffs a soft laugh and shrugs. “Nothing you do not already know,” he says, forlorn in his usual mock-tragic way, only Danny suspects there’s more than the usual level of truth behind it, which is when he remembers the look on Alekos’s face the last time Danny’d seen him—standing in the doorway of the bar, watching Marina and Joe walk down the hill, arm in arm. 

“Ah.” He says, and scoots Alekos over so he can join him on the chaise. Danny pulls the larger man against him, running his fingers soothingly through Alekos’s thick dark waves. “You know she’s just so glad to have her dad's boat back,” he ventures softly, as though saying too much too loudly will only upset him more. 

He nods, and leans against Danny more solidly, like he’s letting some of the weight of it go. 

Danny smiles. It’s been a while since they’ve done this, the easy and comfortable platonic cuddling, and he’s missed it. It’s been him, he knows, who’s held them back from it—because he’d been growing desperate for _more_ in that way he’d known wasn’t right for them. It’s only now he’s starting to wonder how much of _that_ had been because of Alekos, and not Danny. 

“You really are in love with her, aren’t you?” He says, hearing the wonder in his tone and hoping it doesn’t make his friend bristle. 

Another shrug. Of denial? Uncertainty? Something else?

Danny tries to pulls away enough to see his face, but Alekos tightens his grip so Danny can’t get a good look. “Okay, okay,” he says, working his fingers more firmly against his scalp. “Wanna tell me? Or should I just guess.”

A nod. Slight, nearly imperceptible. But a nod. 

Danny chuckles fondly. “Is it maybe that she’s just always been there, always part of your life, but now... with Joe... she’s maybe showing another side?” Danny pauses, mostly because it’s hit him, the realization, and he thinks he gets it. “Mmmm,” he says, stalling while he thinks how to word it. “She’s softer with Joe,” Danny realizes. “Warm with him... cuddly with him.” Maybe in a way, almost like Danny is with Alekos. “And it’s different to how she is with you,” he says. He doesn’t add the obvious _and_ _that makes you jealous,_ but he knows Alekos hears it anyway. 

When Alekos doesn’t react, Danny takes that as the _yes_ that it is. 

“Do you think....” Danny starts, again, trying to work his way through his thought process. “Is there no one else she’s like that with?” Because the thing is, Danny’s realizing he hasn’t seen it before at all from her—which maybe is why he’d doubted what it meant, himself. The other thing he’s realizing though, is that the way she is with Alekos is different from how she is with Danny. And maybe Alekos simply doesn’t see that. 

The man in question shrugs again, and Danny moves his hands to his shoulder, still soothing him. 

“You are different with Steve,” Alekos points out, and Danny almost protests, almost denies it. 

“Am I?” 

Alekos sits up, leaving the comfort of Danny’s arms, and visibly regretting it, but keen to make his point. “You are. That is why I noticed it. Because I see you with him, and I know, that is what love looks like on you.”

The matter of fact way his best friend simply assumes Danny already knows hits him surprisingly hard. He smiles, though, because of course he’s right, and their conversation that fated day comes back to him. “I thought you didn’t want that for yourself,” he reminds Alekos gently.

Alekos laughs, only it’s not bitter, like Danny might have expected. It’s... well he’s not sure what it is. Hopeful? “I did not think... it was... possible?”

“For you to fall in love?” Danny asks before he realizes that’s absolutely the wrong question.

Alekos shakes his head. 

_Ah._

“For her to love you back.” And suddenly so much clicks into place. Because Danny’s pretty sure Alekos has loved Marina for almost as long as he’s known her. But she’s always held him (as she does everyone) just that little bit apart. Danny hadn’t ever realized what it was, but it’s as though her hurts from her past— _oh the whole wall around her heart metaphor is too cliché, but in a sense,_ she’s kept herself back from truly... _launching her own ship._ Not that that’s any better of a metaphor for the situation, though it is more fitting. Maybe what’s happening, what Alekos is picking up on, and what Danny had himself failed to recognize, is that with Joe’s heroic return, and the ship that’s literally sailed back into port, those old wounds are... maybe not _healing_ precisely, but being uncovered so that they might begin to heal. 

Which is a dangerous prospect to walk into a relationship under. But maybe that’s precisely the point. We can’t wait to be somehow magically whole before embarking on our relationships. Not any more than we can depend on our relationships to heal us first. But somewhere, in the middle there, is the more realistic solution. That once we begin to heal ourselves, the relationships we need have a way of finding us. And the healing that happens then, well—that’s the most beautiful thing of all. 

Danny wants to tell him this, wants Alekos to understand. But it’s not really the kind of thing you can see until you experience it for yourself. And the thing is, Danny thinks Alekos might have started down that path without fully knowing it was where he was going. Now he’s starting to see it, and it has him frightened. 

This sailing trip has the potential to be more than a little symbolic, Danny realizes.

*

He stops by Marina’s later. Mostly to talk about food, and to grab dinner so he doesn’t have to cook. Absolutely _not_ to talk about his little visit from their mutual friend earlier in the day. He almost thinks she knows Alekos has been to see him, though, and it’s unnerving, how it feels like he’s keeping something from her, simply by not mentioning it.

They plan the menus for the trip—from simple breakfasts to more elaborate evening meals. And she’s marked a couple times off, for Joe to supply more American type foods. And there’s of course the hope that someone will manage to catch some decent fish. Danny mentions the meal Steve made for him, which lights Marina’s eyes up delightedly. But she doesn’t push, doesn't tease, doesn’t ask for details—doesn’t say _I told you so._

Because she doesn’t need to.

When he gets back to the hotel, Steve’s swimming, and okay, yes, that makes him incredibly happy. He stows the food in the mini fridge, thinks if this becomes a habit he’d better get a larger one for out here, and makes himself a cocktail, because he deserves it. The rum comes into his hand unthinkingly, and the sharpness of it mixes well with the mellow tart of the pomegranate juice he adds to balance out the syrupy brightness of the lemon sugar base Alekos uses in so many of his island-bottled drinks. 

Danny rolls his pant legs up and dangles his feet in the water, sipping his drink and watching the ex-SEAL who now shares his bed, somehow manage to swim laps in his too-small pool. It feels oddly domestic and surprisingly established, like all things with Steve have seemed. And even when Steve finishes, and splashes up to Danny, planting a slobbery kiss on his lips, stealing his drink and approving of the libation, it feels more like something that’s always only been just about to be, rather than something he’d never dared hope might someday exist. 

Thalia joins them to eat Marina’s simple pasta and meatball dish, and the Swiss guests stop by for a pre-dinner drink and swim. And the laughter is light and easy, the conversation mostly about sailing and other adventures, and by the time they’ve said their good nights, and find themselves on the other side of Danny’s door, the kissing, the undressing, the showering, and the sex is just as second nature, just as familiar, and just as wonderful as every other aspect of his life coming together in some unexpected and absolutely fitting whole, that—just like it had been when he’d found this place all those years ago—simply feels _right._ Like home.

Steve’s body sure feels like home. And Danny’s pushed to intensity by the regret that it’s not something he’s had for longer. He grabs needily at Steve’s chest, bites along his pec, nuzzles into his side, like he would burrow within Steve’s very soul, and only then achieve the closeness he needs. 

“God you’re amazing,” Steve whines, Danny’s desperate attention filling Steve’s own need to be needed. Because of course that’s what it is, Danny realizes. He’d pulled himself into the harbor from a sense of obligation, but it’s the deeper, more primal, instinctive need for _him personally,_ not some service he provides or role he can fill, but _him,_ his person, his being... that need on Danny’s part compels Steve, holds him in sway. It will keep him anchored. Which is ironic, in some ways, because this perpetually adrift sailor is more solid, more secure than the land-locked cave dweller who has compelled him to stay. It’s a balance, as is everything in life. And they seem to meet it in each other with a simplicity, a purity, a gracefulness that Danny’s only dreamed of in those deep, unknowing dreams you sometimes wake from, knowing you’ve glimpsed some element of mythic truth, which can never be fully embodied on earth. And it isn’t, it’s an echo of it. But it’s all the more beautiful for that, and he knows—they are blessed indeed. 

Danny comes hotly across Steve’s chest, then falls on his red and lush dick to suck him till he growls and pushes Danny off, flipping them and painting him similarly, across his own tan and glistening chest. Their shower is brief, mostly because they can’t stop kissing, and trying to stand proves too inconvenient. It’s late by the time they are ready for dessert—and Danny most assuredly does not mean the baklava that sits in the little cardboard box on the kitchen table. Maybe that will be breakfast, with more of Steve’s fabulous coffee. But no, his dessert tonight is to fuck Steve into the mattress until he actually cries, and they melt together, overwhelmed and still not sated, need pressing in on them from all four sides, like the sleeping alcove that’s known their passion for so few days—but he already knows it will never be enough. And that’s just part of it isn’t it. Never enough. Overwhelming in the never-enoughness. And fortunately they’ve both had a very long and very filling day, because it takes essentially blacking out, for them to stop touching and _sleep._

***

In the morning, the day before they leave for their trial sailing, Danny convinces Steve to stay naked in bed while he makes coffee, and grabs the neglected baklava of the night before. Nothing says it’s not completely valid as a morning food. Nuts are good for you, honey is good for you, what’s not to love? In concession to the messiness that is his favorite Greek treat (hey, now, minds out of gutters), he brings a tea towel back to bed, which he lays out before placing the grease-stained box in the center of it, opening the lid and releasing that faint honeyed scent. 

Steve eyes him suspiciously, over the mug of Kona that Danny hands him, drinking tentatively at first—as though maybe he doesn’t fully trust he’d made decent coffee. 

“Seriously? I do know how to brew the beans you know.”

Sip explored, a grin spreads across Steve’s face, not just of approval, of validation, but also of amusement, and something softer that’s probably fondness. An answering warmth spreads through Danny’s belly at the expression, and at the deeper meaning behind it. He likes making Steve happy. And not just in that need-to-please way all humans have (though some of us have it in considerably higher doses than others), but in that nearly impossible to understand way you get when you’re simply _that_ smitten. 

Steve gestures for Danny to come closer, and okay, being given a kiss like _that,_ simply for making coffee. That’s positive reinforcement at its finest. 

“Can we eat here tonight, just the two of us,” Steve asks, once he’s let Danny lips go. “We’ll be with everyone for the next two days, and I want more time with just you first.”

That warmth in his belly, which the kiss sped up, enflames even further, not at the thought so much as that Steve has thought it. 

“Yeah,” he says, nearly breathless. “But let me cook.”

“Of course,” Steve replies. And he makes it sound somehow sexy, like Danny cooking will be enjoyable not just for dining purposes, but less food-related ones as well.

*

Riina spends a good part of the day with her niece at the front desk, though Danny suspects most of their rapid fire Greek conversing has considerably less to do with hotel management and a good deal more to do with a certain well seasoned sailor—at least he’s pretending to himself it’s Joe they’re talking about and not him and Steve. He escapes as much as feels he can, finishing up re-stringing the chaises, as well as making sure things are as extra stocked and extra prepared as possible, so really the next two days can be a little more like a break for Riina than a burden. 

When his anxiousness begins to resurface, he deflects it by heading over to make sure Alekos and Tryfon are managing okay, and really he shouldn’t be the least surprised to find Alekos sitting out front of the bar, in the sun, basking like a sleepy cat, while his cousin’s kids are inside, playfully mixing drinks Danny very much suspects they’re going to offer their “uncle” for tasting. 

“Let me guess,” he says, swatting Alekos’s feet off the chair so he can sit. “Best cocktail gets to be in charge while you’re gone?” 

An amused eye flickers open, washes over Danny in his customary appreciation, and he shrugs non-committaly. 

“You do realize they’ll drink more than they serve, right?” Danny looks at the only barely not-teenagers inside, and wonders where Tryfon is, and if he knows what his brother is allowing.

“They have to learn some how,” Alekos says, utterly unperturbed that the learning might well include drunken dangerousness. 

The youngest of the three kids emerges at that point, a vivid orange drink in her hand, garnished with a burnt lemon twist that even Danny can tell is perfectly executed. 

Alekos accepts the drink with a poorly hidden proud smile. He sips, makes a show of swirling the liquid in his mouth, guessing the ingredients, and praising the drink. Danny knows she’s his favorite, but he also knows his friend well enough to know his approval is genuine. 

Mirela heads back inside with an energetic bounce to her step that warns Danny (having younger sisters himself) that the two older boys are about to be goaded into rushing their concoctions.

“You already know you’re gonna leave her in charge. Why are you making them compete?”

Alekos grins. “I think that is obvious,” he says, taking another sip, then offering the already victorious cocktail to Danny. “They need to know she kicked their asses.”

Sure enough, Mirela’s drink is delicious. She’s obviously inherited her uncle’s awareness of how different ingredients work together in liquid form. 

“The Campari I get,” Danny says, sucking the tangy sweetness through his teeth. “But what else is in here?”

The answering smug expression tells Danny he plans on guarding the secret of his niece’s creation, and in any case, both boys burst through the door at that moment, their offerings nearly spilling as they rush to set them on the table for their uncle’s judgement.

“ _Theíos_ , _Theíos_ ,” the eldest calls, setting his drink down first, the tall, sparkling glass brimming with fruit and herbs. “Try mine first,” he insists, and Danny sees why, when the middle child swoops in, setting a rich, creamy, chocolate-looking drink complete with whipped cream and—surely those are sprinkles—on the table next to it. The lighter drink would be lost after one sip of the rich, no doubt overly-sweet, undoubtedly coffee-based offering. 

Nikos alone of the kids attended college in the States, where he developed a fondness for fancy coffee drinks. Danny suspects he wishes to open an American-style coffee bar, but the chances of it faring well here, Danny’s pretty sure, are slim to none. Still, he appreciates the passion, not to mention the effort, and has to restrain himself from reaching for the drink before Alekos gets to it. 

Loukas wins his battle for first tasting, and right away Danny knows Alekos is pleasantly surprised, offering genuine comments and suggestions that leave the boy with a hopeful and inspired expression. 

He turns then to the final offering. “Nikos, you have been ordering things behind my back again,” his _theíos_ accuses. And while the boy momentarily looks worried, Danny knows it’s actually pride in Alekos’s tone, not scolding. “You must show me how to use these—” he waves at the shimmery bits that cover the whipped cream, before swiping a finger through them to capture some to taste on their own before taking a swallow of the drink. “Mmm,” he says, holding the drink out. “Let us ask Danny what he thinks, shall we?”

Danny reaches first for Loukas’s herbal soda, and has a moment of enjoying the way the sweetness of the fig plays off the underlying earthiness of the botanicals. He thinks Riina would be impressed and briefly wonders if he isn’t one of her field workers. It would explain the deep tan and increased musculature the young man has developed since Danny’d seen him last. 

“That’s really nice,” he says, setting it down, and Loukas preens. “Okay, let's see if Starbucks should be concerned....” And it’s no secret Danny has a sweet tooth, but even he tends to cringe at the excessive sweetness of your typical coffee cocktail, especially the exuberant ones that include whipped cream and those fancy cocktail glitters that have become so popular. So he’s expecting to have to play nice and be thoughtful in his review, but the thing is, the drink is so damn good he takes a second sip, and then a third, and Nikos, the mellow middle child, simply stands proudly, letting his work speak for itself. “I hope you remember what you did, because I’ll want that again sometime,” Danny admits, setting the drink down before he gives himself a sugar rush. 

Once the kids return inside to fulfill the second part of Alekos’s bartender challenge—the perfect gin and tonic—Danny realizes there’s a secondary plan at work with their training. With neither Tryfon or Alekos having kids of their own, it’s always been implied that the brothers would be the next “brothers” in The Two Brothers. But with the emergence of the ship, Danny knows there will be a need not just for bartending help but also deck hand help. Danny also knows that it’s Mirela who is just as handy with the ropes and rudders as she is with a shot glass and citrus peeler. She’s her uncle’s niece in the truest sense, more than either of the boys. Including her flirtatious nature, which also works well in the tourism industry. 

“They are growing up too fast,” Alekos sighs, breaking into Danny’s train of thought. He grabs for the fig soda again, and Danny hopes Loukas notices which drink is the one that gets emptied. The other two may be showier or more perfectly executed, but his is the one Alekos drinks the most of, and Danny knows that should matter. 

He makes his excuses before the next round of drink tasting begins, claiming—which is true—that he needs to head to the store. Supplies procured, a simple dinner planned, Danny heads... well, _home._ He surprises himself not in the least to find he very much likes thinking “home” and “where Steve soon will be” in the same breath. 

*

Danny’s got a simple tomato tart in the oven, bottle of a nice fruity rosé chilling, when he heads out for a quick stroll of the property—finding everything so much more sedate since the California guests have gone their way onward to their next location. They hadn’t left before promising to return next year as always, and made variously veiled and not-at-all-subtle hints about boats and snorkeling gear and catching fish (or more likely pretending to catch fish) because won’t _that_ be the talk of Instagram. 

Thalia is in the lobby, having just finished a mini class on making high impact with minimal (aka cheap) florals and fruit, and a mother and son duo are asking about using fresh herbs in arrangements, which works out nicely as that’s Riina’s area of expertise. She may have less a relaxing break than Danny’d intended, because he will not be surprised if she ends up inviting them for a tour of her herb and vegetable farm, and he will also not be surprised if he returns to find the lobby filled with her signature and delightfully playful vegetable-based centerpieces. 

It’s not that Danny objects, in theory, to eggplant and tomatoes as part of a floral display. It’s just that grapes and figs are considerably more likely to be consumed by passers by than, say, an entire raw eggplant. Beautiful, Riina’s herbal and vegetal arrangements unquestionably are. But the practical side of Danny prefers fruit. 

Speaking of fruit, Thalia leads the class up to the pool deck for drinks, and Danny lingers at the desk, checking messages, finding everything is taken care of, and winding up restocking coffee filters from the supply cupboard because he may as well do _something._

Thankfully Steve walks in, as Danny’s about to check if the stapler needs filling—which considering it’s entirely for show at this point is unlikely. He must look relieved at his boyfriend? Lover? Housemate?’s appearance, because Steve grins, steps into the office, closing the door carefully behind him, muttering “I’ve always wanted to do this,” and presses Danny up against the wall, nearly devouring him with kisses that speak of an absence far longer than several hours. 

“Missed you too,” Danny exhales when Steve lets him go. 

“Is dinner ready?” Steve asks, tone only partly teasing, part genuine, and Danny finds he’s stupidly happy to in fact have dinner ready, for just them two, and he swiftly leads an eager Steve to his rooms. 

“That smells amazing,” Steve says as soon as Danny's got the door open, and Danny’s pretty sure he preens a little, like the kids had done when Alekos had praised their drinks.

He pours them glasses of the rosé, and he lets Steve hold him captive against the kitchen counter, alternating sips of the sweet, juicy wine, and even sweeter kisses. If it weren’t for the fact that the tart really needs to come out of the oven, Danny’s pretty sure he’d let Steve fuck him right here, right now. As it is, when the tart makes its grand entrance, crust golden and flaky, tomatoes caramelized around the edges, toasted herbs dotting the top, the sounds Steve makes aren’t wholly distinguishable from his sex sounds, and when Danny scoops heaps of soft, creamy goat's milk cheese over the slices he’s dished up, Steve takes the spoon from him and licks it, and Danny goes hard in his pants. 

Against Danny’s better judgement, they sit on the sofa to eat, mostly because he wants as much support as possible, and simple wooden chair—either in the kitchen or out on the patio—is _not_ cutting it tonight. 

The tart has either turned out better than it typically does, or cooking for someone else makes his cooking better, or being utterly turned on while eating makes food taste richer, fuller, simultaneously more sweet and more savory... or it’s just that he fucking loves everything about this situation, from the tightness of his pants against his swelling dick, to the juicy bite of tomato that feels nearly sexual on its own, to the salty-pine scent of Steve as he sits so close, Danny’s legs thrown over his thighs, unabashedly making appreciative sounds that could just as easily have come from an R-rated scene in a movie. 

His choice of sofa turns out to have been the right one, as they transition smoothly from eating to making out, which really doesn’t feel like much of a transition at all, especially given that Steve’s sounds of enjoyment change barely at all. They both make maybe more sounds than they have tended to, Steve shushing Danny’s louder emanations with his fingers or his lips or his dick, and he’s pretty sure there’s an aspect to it, for them both, of anticipating two days of necessary quiet. 

There’s also an element of indecision tonight. Flying between sucking and pressing and holding and thrusting, settling on one mode never more than mere moments before anxiously, frantically almost, moving on to something else, more, better, deeper. Eventually it’s simply that a tipping point’s been reached, passed, met, and they fall over the edge of their pleasure (and over the edge of the sofa) at the same time. 

Fortunately, it’s not a long way from the low, built-in seat to the softly ruged floor, and they dissolve in soft laughter, out of breath but not out of need. 

They wash, side by side, but untouching, drying, and sliding into bed still naked, resting apart but facing, smiles thoughtful, processing. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” Danny says into the quiet. Mostly because it’s simply true, partly just to say _something,_ and a little bit because what he wants to say is something a whole lot more declarative. 

Steve grabs for his hand and kisses it, lips brushing heedlessly or maybe not, right against the third finger, making Danny’s skin tingle. 

They stay like that for a seemingly endless while, passing unawares, gently into sleep.

***

They’ve both already packed, so when Steve rouses Danny with a blow job and a mug of coffee, they don’t do much more than quickly eat the leftover tart, toss a couple more things in their bags, and stop to kiss at least five times as they attempt to make it out Danny’s door, blushing, both of them (in Steve’s case a very fetching shade of soft raspberry), when Thalia reaches around them to close and lock Danny’s door, tsking teasingly as she does. 

“Let’s go, boys, Joe will be irritated if we are late.”

Riina’s already at the front desk, coffee brewing, door open to the sea view, and Danny returns her wave as Thalia shoos them out the door before Danny can panic that he’s leaving his precious hotel for two entire days. 

He does start to panic just a little, halfway down the slope, but Thalia’s a step ahead of him, and tells him she’s promised Joe they’d stop in the market to get some last minute things, and she sends Danny and Steve to get bread and pastries while she gets whatever else it is they need. He briefly wonders when Thalia instructed Steve on the art of keeping Danny distracted so he doesn’t freak out, or maybe he’s just naturally good at that, but either way it works, and by the time they’re laden with even more bags, Danny has switched mostly over to “vacation” mode—but with this extra tantalizing layer of finally getting a glimpse of something he’s so long hoped for.

The ship looks glorious. Her sails are wafting in the breeze, and it makes Danny think of the horses in the starting gate at the Derby. Twitching to be let loose. The brothers and Marina have beat them there, and Alekos looks like it’s where he belongs, thick thighs showing beneath tight pale blue shorts, bulky arms bulging from the rolled up sleeves of his tee shirt. Give him a jaunty hat and a pipe, and Danny might think they’ve stepped onto a film set. 

Marina is busy in the above-deck kitchen, stowing food, rearranging things, muttering to herself in Greek. Joe is watching her fondly, not in the least offended that he’s obviously put every pot and every utensil he owns in completely the wrong place. 

They drop off the food they’ve brought and scurry away below deck to stow their belongings, only to be met by Tryfon, portraying his own version of the ancient Greek mariner. He directs Thalia to the cabin she’ll share with Marina, and leaves it to Steve to show Danny to theirs. It’s the first mate’s cabin, Danny knows, and he might have anticipated that meaning it’s maybe less well outfitted than the “guest” quarters, but he couldn’t be more wrong. The bed is curved and padded on the sides, the alcove around it railed in glowing golden wood, lamps fixed on either side, and en-suite bathroom small but well appointed. 

“Surely this is the Captain’s quarters,” Danny says, awed. 

Steve shrugs. “Joe’s cabin is smaller, but he’s an old sea dog, likes his solitude, likes his privacy. I told him I didn’t need the larger one, but he seemed to think I would.” He looks at Danny with dangerous heat. “I can’t think how he knew. Even if Marina is as Delphic as it sometimes seems.” 

The implication, that there’s been this level of synchronicity underlying the entire enterprise from so far in the beginning is too enormous a concept to allow, so Danny shoves the thought from his mind as he shoves his bag into the secure area, roped to keep it in place, in case of rough seas. He only hopes it helps in case of surging emotions just as effectively. 

They join everyone on deck, Danny offering his help to Marina as Steve joins Joe and the brothers in preparing to set sail. 

The idea had been to get the ship out of port early enough in the morning, before she would draw too much attention, but there’s a small crowd watching nonetheless. Thalia is already at work, taking the pictures Danny knows will be ready to post to the website and to social media as soon as they’re ready to go public. 

It’s only seemingly moments before they’re truly underway, and Marina grabs Danny’s hand, pulling them away from their busy work, to admire, to appreciate, to adore—that freeing feeling of being under the power of the wind, lightly adrift atop the sea, gliding, coasting, dancing across the waves, off to whatever adventure awaits. 

_The look on her face..._ Danny wishes he could capture it, yet wouldn't dare. It’s powerfully intimate, decades of hurt and loss and mourning, bouncing away behind them as the ship cuts through the water, bringing her closer to her father than she’s been in a long time, closer to redemption. Closer to peace. 

She sees him watching, and pulls him close, wrapping him around her from behind, leaning against him, letting him support her in her moment of overwhelming reconnection. 

“I’m so glad you’re here for this,” she whispers, and he knows she’s pulled him close partly so he can’t see her cry.

They set a reasonable pace, once they’re truly out at sea, and Danny feels the shift, when they settle somehow. Like the ship almost takes over. Marina’s tears have long been dried by the sea air. Salt clearing away salt, and that old adage about _the cure for anything_ feels deeply true. She holds him close then turns and smiles, like they’ve shared something profound. Danny’s not sure they haven’t. 

“Thank you,” she says, smile just that little bit forced. “Now. Let’s make coffee. I think the men will want some food.” 

Danny chuckles, but follows her back to the kitchen deck obediently. Thalia is still snapping away, and she captures a few shots of coffee and pastries as Danny sets them out. He makes a note of it, because the photos she takes have a way of coming back to him in the form of requests from prospective guests. He briefly wonders how expensive it will be to get all their coffee from Hawaii, then realizes he’s going to be needing to increase his usual pastry order, which will no doubt cost him a large bottle of ouzo and a decent sized hangover, given the way his original negotiation with his favorite baker went. 

Joe’s given the helm over to Steve, and Alekos and Tryfon grab coffee and a pastry each, settling up front to give the bright new cushions a trial run. Marina pours mugs for Danny and Steve, and suggests he check which pastry Steve wants, but Danny repeats his “one meat one cheese” selection of last time, and, wrapping them up in the cloth napkin she provides, he leaves her and Joe to whatever reminiscence they’re needing to share. 

Steve grins like a loon when Danny joins him in the captain’s alcove, perched just slightly above the deck, shielded from the elements, and just private enough Danny doesn’t protest when Steve sets the coffee and pastry down, and tugs Danny in for a very thorough kiss. 

“How’s everyone getting on?” Steve asks once he’s explored Danny’s mouth to his satisfaction and turned to coffee and the task before him on the open sea. 

“Alekos is perfectly at home, as he is anywhere. Tryfon seems to have a secret sailor setting I didn’t fully know about, he’s still his usual stately self, but it’s almost like he’s more comfortable on the water than he is on land?” Danny pauses. “Marina...” he takes a steadying breath. “God, Steve, she’s needed this. It’s like part of her has been missing, and she’s whole again. I thought she maybe had a crush on Joe, but it’s the _boat_.” He looks down at the burnished wooden railing his hand rests on. “This boat means more than I could have imagined.” He looks up at Steve, thinking maybe he’ll see puzzlement, but all he sees is understanding. 

“She’s a great _ship_ ,” Steve says, gently correcting Danny’s choice of terminology. “I can’t imagine not getting to sail her, having known what she’s like.”

And it’s so close to what Danny feels about his hotel, about the island. And it’s not like he’s consciously doubted Steve’s sincerity about his willingness to stay, but with those words, Danny knows. He means it the way Danny does, so deeply within his heart. And that’s a real treasure, no doubt about it. Steve lifts one hand off the wheel, letting Danny within his arms, and he settles contentedly back against the broad chest that already feels like home, and knows this place, this ship, this steer-house will become as familiar to him as his own hotel, and that feels more right than he could have ever imagined. 

“Thalia’s taken I think five hundred photos,” Danny says, as Steve pays slightly more attention to kissing his neck than steering the boat. “I know she wishes her grandparents were still around to see it, but I think she’ll find a way to make up for that, and the webpage for this endeavor will be stunning, that’s for sure. She’ll seduce everyone to come sailing. Even those who don’t think they’d like it.”

Steve scoffs, as if such people couldn’t possibly exist, and Danny squirms a little in his arms, settling in, as if he’d meld himself perfectly within Steve’s embrace. 

“You like it,” Steve whispers, pleased.

Danny chuckles. “Yeah, babe. I like it. I like it a lot.”

Steve shivers at the pet name, kisses Danny’s neck once more, and then neither of them speak or move for a very long time, letting the moment just _be_. 

*

Tryfon and Alekos take over at the helm while Danny helps Marina with lunch, and Steve and Joe do mysterious ship testing things, ensuring everything’s working as it ought, and she'll pass her upcoming tests—and then be certified for paid passengers. 

Thalia has taken to the ship like she was born to it, climbing places Danny’s certain Riina will thrash him for letting her go, getting a true bird’s eye view of the ship. Danny makes a note to be sure she hasn’t captured any non-family friendly content, under the guise of praising her photography skills. 

It’s Steve and Danny’s turn for testing the lounge deck, so they take their “New Jersey Style” sandwiches—Marina’s term for her version of Danny’s favorites sandwich which is entirely more Greek than one might assume given the name, and anyone who thought the two cuisines wouldn’t meld well would be surprised—and lay back on the plush loungers, slightly in the shade of the tallest sail, slight chill from the swiftness of the air as they cut through the calm waves, on their way to Joe’s chosen cove.

“Yeah, this is going to be popular,” Danny says, after they’ve eaten, and he’s stretched contentedly out, head resting in Steve’s lap, those strong fingers playing absently with his hair. “God, who would want to vacation any other way?”

Steve’s warm chuckle reverberates through Danny’s body, and something about the sensation fills him with that fuzzy feeling of safety, of protection... like childhood memories of Christmas mornings. “Who would want to _live_ any other way,” Steve amends softly, and Danny’s not about to disagree. 

Eventually they go to see if Tryfon and Alekos need relieving at the wheel (that’s a hard “no,” Danny’s not seen the older brother more pleased, more contented, more... joyful, possibly ever). So they go to check on Marina and Joe. They’ve moved to the cushioned swath at the back of the ship, a broad expanse of fluffy white cushion, perfect for a cozy, intimate conversation, where any words whispered will be instantly whisked away by the wind. She’s cuddled up against his chest, and Danny knows she’s been crying—from the brightness of her eyes, and the softness in Joe’s. 

As they become aware of Steve and Danny’s approach, Danny thinks about backing away, leaving them to whatever memories they’re sharing, and he reads Steve’s posture as him having the same thought, but Joe waves them forward, and Marina smiles, but doesn’t vacate her warm, protected spot within Joe’s sheltering posture. As Danny climbs onto the raised platform, she reaches out for him, and tugs him against her, so she’s in effect sandwiched between them. 

“I am being a soft sentimental old woman,” she says when he’s decided denying her is futile and has nestled in at her side. “But I have my family again, and I am so damn happy.” She kisses Danny on the head, pulling him closer against her bosom, then reaches out her hand to Steve. “That means you too, McGarrett,” and he kneels on the cushion to take the offered hand, and he’s soon pulled close against Danny. “It is a... _group hug_ ,” she says, gruffly, and all three men know better than to deny her what she wishes, so they stay put. 

It’s not too much longer before Danny notices Alekos walking towards them, and he holds his breath hoping he won’t turn away, but he doesn’t. And maybe Danny’s talk helped, or maybe it’s just the Greek inability to deny facing the truth no matter what the outcome, but he pushes forward, not slowing his pace, till he’s standing before them all. And now that he’s near, Danny sees that his expression isn’t wary or suspicious or envious, but rather, warm and open, and... _happy._ Happy in a soft, bittersweet way. But Danny realizes (as he’s surprised by the lack of jealousy) that the relationship between his two closest friends is far deeper, far more complicated, far more intermingled than Danny’s ever imagined. 

If Marina has been taken back to her childhood by the re-emergence of this ship and the men associated with it, if she’s been reminded of the little girl she was... well then, in much the same way, Alekos has been transported back to his own childhood, and very possibly the moments that bound him to her in the first place. Danny sees in his smile the small child who had been too young to understand, who had in a sense lived the shipwreck drama all those years ago through the older, more aware Marina. Danny’s never known much about what role Alekos played, those ten or so years after, when her father had died, and the ship been heartlessly (but pragmatically) sold. But he thinks he sees it now. Alekos would have been just fifteen—old enough to want to help, but still too young to be of any comfort to the nearly twenty year old Marina. And now, it’s as though seeing her find her peace over that long held sorrow, he too can finally be at peace. 

Danny wonders if it won’t be something of a fresh start for them. If they hadn’t been in some sense always fated for each other, and the stars are only now finally aligning. 

It’s a hopeful thought, and Danny feels the lightness in Alekos’s expression as though it were his own. 

“How’s your brother doing at the helm?” Joe asks, when no one else says anything. 

Alekos grins. “He is happier than I have seen him in a long time. I think that he misses sailing more than he admits. Fishing too. He would be happy being a fisherman, I used to think. Not enough money in it, the way he fishes,” Alekos adds with a laugh.

“In that case,” replies Joe, and Marina gasps lightly, as he tries to extricate himself. “There’s some old gear on board, maybe he’d like to have a go....” He adds something in a whisper to Marina, who sighs but sits a little up so Joe can move. Steve pulls Danny further against him to balance out their human pile. “Take my place and I’ll go look,” Joe suggests—in a tone that is not so much suggesting as commanding. 

And the thing is, it works. Alekos is just enough in thrall to Joe that he obeys before he thinks, and as soon as he’s taken Joe’s spot on the cushioned platform, Steve (perhaps following some wordless instruction from his former commanding officer) releases Danny—and he’s not at all prepared for it, so he falls against Marina who then lands, essentially, in Alekos’s willing and delighted lap. 

She gasps again, but the timbre of it is utterly different. Surprised still, certainly, but in a way Danny absolutely recognizes. A point he’s only more convinced of when she wriggles a little, as though adjusting to the new position (Joe might be taller than Alekos, but the younger man is more overtly muscled), but Danny’s certain there’s more to it than that. He attempts to move a little bit away, but her hand grabs his, stilling him. Obedient once more, he stays put, and is grateful when Steve snuggles back closer, releasing a soft chuckle under his breath so only Danny can hear. 

Managing a glance across Marina to his best friend, Danny’s blue eyes meet Alekos’s brown ones, and they’re well enough versed in wordless communication Danny reads the message loud and clear: _Don’t you dare leave me here alone._ And Alekos can’t know Danny’s being held in place anyway, but he’s doubly pinned (triple pinned actually, given he’s pretty sure Steve’s following some covert plan on Joe’s part to bring the somewhat reluctant couple together), so he gives Alekos the confirmation he needs, though it’s possible his own internal response of _For now I’ll stay but you’ll end up just the two of you soon if I have anything to do with it_ slips out of his thoughts and into his expression. 

After a bit, Alekos must relax into it, because Marina sighs softly, releases Danny’s hand, and settles more plainly into Alekos’s side. 

Danny swears he can feel him glowing from here. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's chapter three. 
> 
> Fourth and final chapter on Sunday. <3


End file.
